Yes No or May be ...

It was just one of those days, when I was my usual self, and was talking to one of the best persons I ever met in my life. The talks happened to move in a direction where logic and philosophy meet or I would say diverge...


It's there in all of us and we do it every day, every minute of our life... (and sometimes for others too!) Yes I am talking out taking decision or rather not taking one!


What drives us to take the decision? What do we think before taking one? On what basis do we make a choice or leave some? Is it just the circumstances or options before us? Or is there more ...


Well as long as there have been humans ...the power to take decision has rested on one individual - the king, the minister, the church, the pope, the president or just the head of a family. Often times, a lot of people are not satisfied with the decisions that have been taken, and all of us have seen this several times in our lives. When we were small, our choice, however small was not heard of...we had to eat according to someone's choice, dress up like they want and play when they like. It was no different in school, with our teachers making us study when the weather was romantic and play when it was raining. So as we grew up, we had just one more desire .... to do things OUR way!


That just translates into making our own decisions, that we like, which make us feel happy and we can take full ownership of it...making no complaints.


At such a juncture in life, we make a lot of decisions and fail in hell lot of them. Most of those decisions are based on bias, friends opinions, guesses and yes .... some thinking! And then we learn from those wrong decisions that we call mistake...cause there is a retake, and we learn more as we climb the ladder called experience. But its not as simple as this. Often we are in a fix, when we want to help someone we love at the cost of our own benefit. As civilized people, its easy to take that decision and we tend to give happiness to others. This makes us happy and we feel proud of ... even a small achievement! But it does not end there .....there is bound to be some dissonance afterwards.


One of my best friend, visited me after a long time and he had a 3 year old kid then. And while we indulged in our long talks, our kids started fighting over their toys. I happened to explain to my son that they were our guests, and he ought to share his toys with him for some time. In complete disagreement, he gave them and walked off. I realised later, those small toys that he does not even play with anymore, are his universe, which he owns and loves tremendously.All the time, my friends kid was playing with his toys, he felt bad and cried.


We also fail to share things that we love the most and when we have to the feeling is not pleasant...


So is there a right way to take those conflicting decisions? I was at the same point, a decision could change my life in one way and potentially change my loved ones life in another. I was, as usual, perplexed. One approach was to delay the judgement, till the option seems obvious, but then the decision has to be taken!

There are multiple ways that philosophers and scientists have come out with for dealing with situations that do not hurt anyone and take the mid-way.
'Gita' tells us to take the middle-path and not to be swayed in one direction. Our upbringing and the way society taught us to take concrete decisions to move forward.....are boolean - Yes or No, 1 or 0 and right or wrong. But then there are also answers based on probability like - Likely, Perhaps, or May be.


All through the day, we discussed the best way to take decisions is based on logic (boolean) or a philosophy of life ('Gita') (I am extremely grateful to her for this)


I have not found the best set of answers in my life. Have you?

My first experiment with blogs

Today I sat down to write my very first blog on India's 63rd Independence Day.

I wonder what took me sooooo  long to get to blogging ...was it my own principles or just external factors, the fear or the boldness to face the world, the rebel within to start a storm or the learnings of life to tame the tempest.

My life has echoed a lot of messages that I need to capture to start living a LIFE....

I want to thank my whole family, friends, relatives, teachers, mentors and enemies who have made me who I am today (yes enemies ....they have taught me a lesson too)!

I am extremely lucky to have such a supportive family and a wonderful wife.