Suppose you have a free gift of a key chain. Now the key chain has many varieties of shapes, you have a choice of bicycle, palm tree, monkey, crocodile, and key. The catch is there are five crocodile-shaped ones, three bicycles, two palm trees, 1 monkey, and 1 key-shaped ones. Let's say you're most attracted to crocodile-shaped key chain because the design is the best of the lot. At this point, the mind obviously wanted the most 'unique' ones (read: the least quantity), namely key and monkey - it reflects the demands of the market (what else explains the quantity of 1?). It's inescapable that we have a herd mentality, we follow the crowd. Four in five experiences of given a choice, I think people would hesitate, ponder, repeat the same process, and eventually would choose either the key or the monkey.
Choosing an outfit, choosing a footwear, choosing a travel destination, choosing a phone model...you name it, we've all been through it! I believe we also went through a process of narrowing down, eliminating the obvious unwanted alternatives first, then compare benefits of the remaining ones side by side. It's a tedious task and is rewarding at the end (hopefully). Yet I can't help but think, given just one path to follow, one gift, one travel destination, one university to go to, however unfavorable the 'offering' may be, we may be happier, knowing that there's no other choice. Acceptance comes easily at that point, and we move on. With acceptance, we cease to be bothered, we cease to spend time in comparing, we cease to have worries or troubles, we cease to ponder, and we begin to be 'happy'. I'm probably using the word 'happy' too liberally here, but you know what I mean.
So, choice, or no choice?
3 comments:
I am not sure if this is a question of whether choices are available. I think it's more a question of whether one's willing to take responsibility for the choices one made, no matter what they may be. For people who live their own lives, they take pride in the choices they've made (eg Frank Sinatra's "My Way"). For others, it's almost too easy to play the victim and blame the world for all their problems by believing that they have "no choice".
People consider and reconsider their decisions, there are millions of decisions (read: choices) to be made each day. Yet we are human, and playing victim is one thing we do really well.
time to update =P
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