I like the word ‘inertia’. First I read about it was in class 11th in physics text book but as years passed by, I have grown to associate this word more with psychology than with physics. May be inertia was never a physics term, Newton must have read psychology and he just saw that physics can do well with this concept. It’s amazing how we let ourselves drift just because we are not ready to force ourselves to stop and turn or we just stay rooted even if we want to move ahead.
Force that is needed to change this state of inertia has its origins in our minds. And that force is generated by vector addition of two decisions – one, to act or not to act and two, when to act if one need to. Sometimes, we like to trick ourselves, we tell ourselves it’s not the right time to act when we actually are not even sure if want to act. It’s convenient and it keeps the difficult question away, rather it allows us to pretend that we have an answer when we don’t have one. I can confidently and with a voice of authority tell myself…it’s not the right time, as if I would know what the right time would be. This I guess is one reason why clairvoyance has enthused humanity for ages, because ‘when to act’ has been one of the key drivers of the force that move people.
But ‘to act or not to’ is definitely the complex of the two decisions. This decision is basically a function of our experiences, our perceptions, our apprehensions, our ambitions and our need to get it right. If life was a recipe book then recipe for making this decision would have read something like this - Take all these ingredients, put them in a bowl and stir well, then let it boil in your mind you might first see some indecision frothing at the top but soon it well get cleared and you will have your decision ready to be served hot. Those who might have tried cooking with the help of recipe books would know how it never works out the way it is written. The froth of indecision never goes, that mixture of experiences, apprehensions, perceptions etc. is always more fluid than how it was supposed to be and when you boil it, it always get overcooked. And maybe this is the reason why people prefer a home delivery for a decision like this rather than showing off their skills.
And this brings me back to what I have written once earlier that sometimes we like our decisions to be made for us if we are not sure that we can get them right. Come to think of it, this post was a prequel to that one. And people think only RGV can do that ;-)
Well given I have dabbled in this ‘decision theory’ of mine quite a few times in last 2 months, am sure a sequel to that post would come too……but for that to happen I guess I may just need to go and find me a bodhi tree ;-)
-siddhartha
Force that is needed to change this state of inertia has its origins in our minds. And that force is generated by vector addition of two decisions – one, to act or not to act and two, when to act if one need to. Sometimes, we like to trick ourselves, we tell ourselves it’s not the right time to act when we actually are not even sure if want to act. It’s convenient and it keeps the difficult question away, rather it allows us to pretend that we have an answer when we don’t have one. I can confidently and with a voice of authority tell myself…it’s not the right time, as if I would know what the right time would be. This I guess is one reason why clairvoyance has enthused humanity for ages, because ‘when to act’ has been one of the key drivers of the force that move people.
But ‘to act or not to’ is definitely the complex of the two decisions. This decision is basically a function of our experiences, our perceptions, our apprehensions, our ambitions and our need to get it right. If life was a recipe book then recipe for making this decision would have read something like this - Take all these ingredients, put them in a bowl and stir well, then let it boil in your mind you might first see some indecision frothing at the top but soon it well get cleared and you will have your decision ready to be served hot. Those who might have tried cooking with the help of recipe books would know how it never works out the way it is written. The froth of indecision never goes, that mixture of experiences, apprehensions, perceptions etc. is always more fluid than how it was supposed to be and when you boil it, it always get overcooked. And maybe this is the reason why people prefer a home delivery for a decision like this rather than showing off their skills.
And this brings me back to what I have written once earlier that sometimes we like our decisions to be made for us if we are not sure that we can get them right. Come to think of it, this post was a prequel to that one. And people think only RGV can do that ;-)
Well given I have dabbled in this ‘decision theory’ of mine quite a few times in last 2 months, am sure a sequel to that post would come too……but for that to happen I guess I may just need to go and find me a bodhi tree ;-)
-siddhartha
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