Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Choice Cut

The hardest part is not knowing.  I can make tough decisions if I have all the information.  I’ve endured pain; I’ve caused it, too.  I can live in complex, compromised twilight worlds, balancing devils on the edge of a sword.  If I know what is really going on, I can make an appropriate choice under the circumstances and I can live with it.  It may take all my strength and will, but if I can be confident in my decision, I can withstand hell itself to carry it out. 

But when I don’t know enough to choose, that’s when things break down for me.  I keep reviewing what I know, hoping it will lead me to some conclusion, hoping that, with sufficient analysis, I’ll be able to see my way through the thicket.  I repeat partial propositions and hanging halves of incomplete syllogisms.  I think myself stupid.  Then I try to choose a course of action that minimizes the downside potential - without really feeling sure what, or where, that potential is. 

Sometimes I can put off making a decision till things resolve a little.  Sometimes I have to decide anyway, even while dithering over half-facts and unknown consequences.  Merely making the choice in such situations is wrenching.  Having the confidence to live with it takes a kind of strength that beggars that required for merely enduring the consequences.  It’s the difference between total committment to a known end, and resigning myself to a proposal that I hope will do less harm than good.  It requires faith, not in logic and facts, but in myself.  That turns out to be a lot more challenging, in the end.