A Dimly Lit World
How do we make decisions in life?
There's a topic I've had on my mind for probably nearly a decade at this point, so I wanted to try to express it here if I can. It's something of an unformed thought, more of a kind of itch in the back of my head that I feel the need to explore, so you'll have to forgive me if this post lacks polish. The topic is the question of how we make our way through the world. How do we make the decisions that bring us from Point A to Point B? Why do we make those decisions? What significance do they have and how can we identify when we're making good decisions and when we're making poor decisions?
I think this topic is on my mind to some extent because I feel that, in the past, I've maybe made some questionable decisions, or at least decisions that haven't turned out the way that I hoped they would. On the one hand, it's perhaps possible for me to look back at each of these choices and think, "Ah, well, that was a mistake. I'll have to make sure not to do that again." However, in some cases, when something hasn't gone the way that I had hoped it would, it's not clear that the decision itself is the primary factor contributing to the undesirable outcome. Sometimes in life we just get unlucky. Sometimes things just don't go our way.
The curious thing is that I feel that I've had periods in my life when just about everything seems to go my way, and other periods when nothing does. Yet, as myself, it's very unclear to me what specifically was different about my behavior or about my decision-making process during these periods. This makes it quite difficult to replicate the good periods and avoid the bad ones. Perhaps that's because I was genuinely not responsible for whatever run of luck I might have had during some period of time or other. It does seem reasonable to surmise that in some cases, luck is a more important factor than one's own decisions or behavior are.
And yet, this line of reasoning feels like a cop out. If I simply throw my hands up and attribute any bad results to luck, then I might have difficulty getting better at navigating life. As such, even if some portion of my success or failure has been due to luck, it’s possible that I should conceive of the majority of the results that I obtain as being caused by my own decisions. It is certainly true that there have been periods in my life when I have made good or perhaps even excellent decisions, and other periods when I have made mediocre or poor decisions.
The real difficulty comes in sorting out one period from another. What is it about a certain set of behaviors or tendencies that seems to lead to superior outcomes? And how can I determine which set of behaviors are bringing about these outcomes? After all, there are many different factors to untangle. Let's say, for example, that I adopt Behavior A for a three-month period, from January to March of a given year, after which I switch to Behavior B from April to June. If I begin to see early signs of success during May, for example, what should I conclude? Are these hints of success an indication that Behavior B is paying off for me? Or am I merely harvesting the wheat that I planted over the winter when I engaged in Behavior A? It can be very difficult to tease out cause and effect in these scenarios. I could, of course, conduct a certain set of behaviors for a longer period of time, but unfortunately it's not really possible to know how long to wait before concluding that a given strategy isn't bearing fruit. After all, some things in life take years to accomplish. Sometimes all it takes is a little persistence.
The other element that makes it very difficult, is that I believe that different behaviors can have dramatically different effects depending on the person who engages in them. So, for example, let us consider a man, who we will name Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is an extrovert. He works at a large company where he is an up-and-coming manager. He has been promoted twice in the last year. Mr. Smith loves to socialize. He finds people intrinsically interesting. He genuinely likes and admires his superiors and cares deeply for his direct reports. When he communicates with others, his messages are full of genuine enthusiasm.
Can you imagine being Mr. Smith? I am finding recently that I cannot. It’s not that I don’t share some of these traits, it’s simply that I don’t think it’s possible for me to be genuinely enthusiastic about things on a persistent basis. I am to wary of the downsides, too protective of my own emotional energy. I prefer to hedge my bets, to take things gradually.
Of course, both of these strategies are perfectly acceptable. There are situations that call for enthusiasm and situations that call for caution. Both kinds of people are needed at different times to accomplish different objectives. I do not consider my approach to be better than Mr. Smith’s, but I cannot deny that it is different. Both of these approaches can be successful, but if I asked Mr. Smith for advice about how to conduct myself in some situation, he might advise me to act in a way that would be entirely appropriate and reasonable for him but that would not be a good fit for me.
The unhappy conclusion of all of this hypothesizing is that, not only is it very difficult to tease out which of our behaviors will contribute most forcefully to the accomplishment of our objectives, but we are also unable to look at the examples provided by other people to understand exactly how we should act if we wish to accomplish our objectives. The set of behaviors that will most benefit Mr. Smith and bring him lasting satisfaction and fulfillment are sure to be different from the set of behaviors that will most benefit me and bring me lasting satisfaction and fulfillment. But this brings us to an unfortunate conclusion: we cannot analyze our own behavior to determine how we should act, because we cannot accurately tease out cause and effect. And we also cannot rely on the behavior of others to guide us in determining how to act, because behaviors that work for them may fail for us. So how exactly should we act? There is no generic solution—each person must go through the grueling and often painful experience of trying to discover who they themselves are and what set of actions will bring about the results they desire. And even that is making the dangerous assumption that we are each capable of accurately understanding what particular results we actually do desire, something that we cannot be sure of.
I don't mean to get overly negative—it is possible to determine how to get where we want to go and many of us do so with grace. Yet life can also be deeply confusing, surprising, and unfortunate. Given the challenges I've outlined above, we should expect to struggle a little as we try to find our way through. While I would not say that we are entirely blind beings, groping helplessly in the dark for some shred of insight, we do have difficulty understanding how to bring about our desired outcomes. We live, that is, in a dimly lit world, where it is all too easy to get turned around and end up facing the wrong direction.