The Sum Of Our Choices

Part 1

Studies suggest that an average person makes 35,000 choices per day. And you will be surprised by this – "Assuming that most people spend around seven hours per day sleeping and thus blissfully choice-free, [they make] roughly 2,000 decisions per hour or one decision every two seconds (Krockow, 2018)." You are about to complete one decision right now – and that is to continue reading. Thanks for that, and I hope you decide to read on until the end.

We are in constant decision-making mode. In a span of one minute, adults make more decisions than breaths. But I do not intend to dig deeper into the scientific details of this decision-making process – like behavioral scientists claim that 90% – 95% of our decisions are subconscious.

I just wish to point out what I consider the ultimate consequences of the choices we made in the past and continue to make every day.

Do you want to know? Read on.

The results of the collective decisions we make and continue to make are what we have become and the kind of life we live.

The person you are now – physically, emotionally, mentally, socially, spiritually (that is, if you, like me, believe that God exists), whatever you have accomplished, and where you are in the established economic strata are the consequences of the all the choices you made in life. You and your life are the products of your choices.

To explain further, I could cite several studies (the way I did in this essay's first paragraph) and mention famous philosophers' contributions to the subject. But I decided not to go that route but instead share what our favorite characters in some movies said about making choices and how they shape us and affect our quality of life.

Before we revisit those quotes from movies, just allow me to drop what Albert Camus, a philosopher, said about the topic we are exploring – "Life is the sum of all our choices."

I don't believe in the doctrine of predestination upheld by the followers of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. It just doesn't make sense to me why God would give us free will if He already preordained everything after all. Even if I am a Christian, I subscribe to what the Buddhists and Hindus believe that our destiny as humans is determined by our actions, thoughts, and words. We, therefore, shape our own future through the decisions we make. The quality of our choices will establish our value as a person and determine the kind of life we live.

As Dr. Emmet Brown said in the movie "Back to the Future" – "We all have to make decisions that affect the course of our lives." We have to do what we ought to. Subscribing to the doctrine of predestination would make us live passively, waiting for how the future that the God we believe designed for us would pan out.

Fatalism is fatal. To think that events in your life are fixed in advance and that you are powerless to change them is a death sentence. Tomorrow is yet to happen, and you could control how the events would play out if you choose to. Your life is an empty script. You and you alone hold the pen. It is a travesty if you allow others to write your life story.

The next hours (or days, or weeks, months, or years) are yet to happen. You can plan ahead. You can control the events of tomorrow. But only if you want. Gandalf of the "Lord of the Rings" fame comes to mind. He said, "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."