Deciding is one of the most challenging tasks for me, and the extant resources for thinking about and 'coming to' or ('arriving at') a decision are few and far between and often very particular to certain kinds of situations. In my work, I hope to provide better information and resources for others to decide, but I do think having to face decisions themselves is an ineluctable aspect of being human, of discerning and considering potential options and electing one or the other based on some kind of existential criteria, some sense of how a given activity fits in with what one is doing and what one wants to do. How we see ourselves taking the river of our volition into the lake of the future.
But such a process is intensely and immersively taxing, if one were to always take it so seriously. There is an innumerable number of possible worlds, if there can be said to be a number of them at all, or if counting worlds is a sensible way to think of discerning option from option (if this process of discerning were so concrete and apparent). And, through our actions, we effectively opt with one course over another, which anticipates other future tributaries that flow from that decision, creating some new opportunities and closing off others. Navigating these possibilities can be overwhelming paralyzing, and debilitating even. But I think it doesn't have to be. Ensuring that one has a proper decision space is important: sitting oneself down, comfortably, satiating all or many of one's needs and taking a few moments, if not longer, to be alone, once one has researched the various possible options.
Decisions often take weeks or months to make as well; by which I mean, all of the research and meditation and consultation and weighing and consideration involved with making an informedly adequate and thoughtful decision takes time, takes effort, takes focus, takes courage. Sometimes, people are faced with relatively easy options, possible courses that do not take much of them to elect. In other cases, people fail to take seriously the different courses before them and just elect to go one way or the other, which admittedly may be a healthy alternative to painfully exhausting oneself over what may be very good options, may be reflective of a set of options which diverge but are both positive.
These kinds of decisions are the most difficult: the ones that entail that you take a stand on your being and give up a part of yourself that you have for some time been cultivating, or requires that you anticipatingly hold them in suspension for a time. Normally, one confronts these situations of election when one has reflected on what is available and and out there in the world and is uncertain of some of the outcomes involved with a potential selection but nonetheless needs to decide and move forward. The possible courses themselves are of equal appeal and speak to different aspects of a person's character, different potential future thems that the person in question has reflected on and wants to move towards in some fashion at some point in their lives. I've confronted these myself, and I realize that there isn't a best choice here; there just needs to be one. As much as we may genuinely and carefully consider the implications of a course, we will not have all of what we need to know to take it, and sometimes we cannot possibly prioritize one over the other based on where we are, as they may both prophesize a different future, and so we just must move forward and learn from whatever action it is that we take. That we take the action is important, however; as it worse to jeopardize our very confidence in our ability to take a stance, to take a position on who we are as human beings. This stance doesn't need to be final, and often isn't, as we are constantly taking new stances that may be consistent with or in contradiction to previous stances. Nevertheless, that we do so is significant. It is important that we are aware of this aspect of selecting courses as well, as it is only with honesty to ourselves that we may be able to recognize ourselves and how to make decisions to fit ourselves.
We must also account for the inevitability of these situations. That, as much as we may practice and act, we will always be confronted with situations consisting of a wholly novel set of circumstances that will challenge our very ways of thinking and relating to the world. If we are not finding these situations, we are not adequately and regularly challenging ourselves in ways that we should if we want to grow along some course that we've discerned and set out to find. Although these existential obstacles have become all the more treacherous and complicated with an increasingly unintelligible social and informational landscape, one in which we are becoming more skilled in distracting ourselves, we can still harness our faculties as human beings to face them and come out successfully. Arendt invests great faith in us here, in our ability to work together to decide collectively and the importance of protecting and revering the process of electing and following through on a given option. The same can be said of an individual, and although I do not want to fall into a kind of Sartrean complete anti-determinism, as it is apparent that we are often not able to make decisions because we are so immersed in a social totality that distracts us persistently, and because we aren't fully aware of all of the options available, fully conscious of everything involved in selecting a course, I do want to emphasize the power involved in selecting a course of action. Nonetheless, there is hope, and we can find this hope in suspending disbelief, in being honest with ourselves about the challenges of selecting a path, being as observant and aware as possible of the information relevant to taking and making a decision, and being reflective about the outcomes of that path, but always, always confident that a decision must be made.
Really, there is no way of getting around deciding, and indecision. There are just ways of coping with it more effectively, openly and honestly and mindfully of what we need as human beings and what our social and natural spaces offer us, time and again, and as much as they change, we must respond to and find ways of dealing with them, and in this way, we change, always adapting to a forthcomingly new and novel world that forever presents new challenges, whether we expect them or not. This is how we must traverse the river of our existence, as we casually row with the various currents of our humanity.
