There is no such thing as keeping your options open. When
you know what you want, there are no options. So don’t ever forget who you are,
and you’ll never have to take a decision in your life.
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"And what in fluctuating appearance hovers, Ye shall fix by lasting thoughts." - Goethe
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About Me
- Pragya Sidhwani
- "I'm just another curious individual with a taste for eccentricities."
I used to think this too.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to be an engineer.
And I became one.
As I was becoming one, I was made extremely aware of the fact that being an engineer (and by extension a scientist) requires you to necessarily make a decision when required.
That is our job.
And once you take up a profession, you have to do your job or end up adding to the chaos in this world.
Making decisions was easy in college - I was young, energetic and many parameters of my life were preset.
But then I left college and hell started breaking lose.
Once you start working, two things happen - 1) you are entrusted with more and more responsibilities and 2) your sense of awareness keeps increasing.
The rate of increase of these phenomenon is directly proportional to your intellect, capability, adaptability and physical health.
And a few years down the line, you can no longer simply make decisions for yourself - because whatever you choose do do, not only affects you, but also affects many other people (some close some unknown to you).
Forget big decisions like shutting your business down and laying off everyone and making lives difficult for them just because you want to retire.
Even simple everyday decision will require delibrations.
So for example you can't just go for a 16 km run from Bandra to Churchgate on a weekday evening because you know that if you do, you will be tired the next day at office,
which will affect your attention and which in turn will make you prone to writing buggy software which might someday kill a few people who used the product that you are working on.
Time has a way of amplifying your certain mistakes.
So its good to try and avoid making them in the first place.
The increasingly keen awareness of the consequences of your own actions will fuck up your mind.
And you will feel tempted to pull off a Christopher McCandless and go live in the wild, away from the world so that your actions have very little affect on them.
You might do it because of other reasons - you become aware that many other people aren't as aware of the consequences of their actions as you are
and keep making shitty decisions day in and day out, and this will fuck your minds out even more. So you run away from it.
As I have grown, I have become addicted to two kinds of pains - one of the physical type - the kind you experience after running marathons.
And two - the pain likened to a snake writhing in your intestines, causing sleepless night during the gestation period from conception of choices to the birth of a decision.
Making a decision, requires you to delibrate and become aware of the risks associated with it. Risks not yourself but others that you care for.
It requires you to possess the strength and conviction to set things right in case they turn to shit because of your decision.
The 16K run has been postponed to friday or saturday now. Sometimes postponing what you have decided to do is the correct decision :P