Decisions define us. These three words express more wisdom
more succinctly than any other three words I know of. Perhaps what they express
is only an axiom；nevertheless
the idea offers great clarity and explanatory power. I am not responsible for
my family background, my gender, my body type, my IQ or even what century I was
born in, because none of these circumstances were the product of my own
decisions. If there is anything essential about ‘me’ (or anyone else), it lies
in that zone of freedom that nature has endowed all of us with to one degree or
another – the gap between stimulus and response.
The decision zone is a zone of total responsibility and no
excuses. By definition, I am the only one who can make my own decisions, and I
am therefore responsible for them. I may not be responsible for their unforeseen
consequences, but I am responsible for the risks that I take and their
foreseeable outcomes. Who I am today, to the extent that I am a free being, is
nothing more than the sum total of every decision that I have ever made.
More than one type of decision is available to help us
define ourselves. One class of decisions is moral decisions. I believe that these
decisions are the most important of all, because our moral characters are the
soil from which everything else about us grows – and nothing good can grow out
of bad soil. There are also practical decisions. My decision to become a doctor
instead of a lawyer, for example, or to marry Tom instead of Dick or Harry,
might critically affect my life even if it lacks moral significance. The third
type of decision is ‘trivial’ decisions, such as what to eat for dinner
tonight.
As far as I know, a dog cannot decide not to bark. But as
people, we do have a limited ability to decide what we do and don’t do. This
window can be seen as either an opportunity or a burden. Freedom of choice
might seem burdensome simply because there is no escape from it. After all, no
decision is a decision too – the decision not to take action. Even a
non-decision has consequences that we can rightly be held accountable for.
I believe that many people seek to escape their freedom.
They may try to forfeit their freedom to other people – family, friends,
boyfriends (as I have done in the past) or they try to distract themselves from
the burden of responsibility by numbing themselves with food, alcohol or drugs.
A better response to the unavoidable reality of freedom, I believe, is to
simply learn how to make better decisions. After all, decision-makers living in
a world filled with adversity allows Earth to produce something that Heaven
never could – heroes. I hope that by the end of my life I will be able to
rightly count myself among them.
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