Blimey, when I first thought of asking that question I was just goofing around and being silly, but having just spent a few moments thinking about it it's thrown up all sorts of other questions. I mean when I first think about decisions and making decisions I think of things like, 'shall I buy the green shoes or the blue ones?' or, 'shall I go out tonight or stay in and catch up on paperwork?' you know 'either or' decisions; ultimatums; conscious choices; moments when your little journey through life takes you to a fork in the road and you have to choose which way you want to go.
But is that really how decisions are made?
If you look down at your feet now can you remember being in a shoe shop and comparing two pairs of shoes and deciding to go with the pair you've got over some other?
Would you say that the experience of buying a shoe is well served by the journey/road/fork analogy?
Maybe shoe buying is more complicated than that. Maybe it's more like a complex interaction of many different motivations and needs, some conscious, some unconscious - I mean you need some shoes so that your feet don't get mashed up on the street, right? But they have to be the right shoes, don't they? It could be that you need the right trainers to stop your whole damn self getting mashed up on the street, or the right cowboy boots so you can go and get laid at Bob's Country Bunker, or the right shoes to get a job interview…whatever - there could be loads of things that feed into the choice you make. AHA! Choice. There you go…there's a difference, isn't there, between decision and choice? Yes there is…you could, at any moment, decide that you need some new shoes but you couldn't really say that you choose to need some new shoes. You're going to go and choose a pair to buy and wear, sure, but you don't choose to need them, no, you decide that you need them and then you need to choose them.
So there might be a lot more to making decisions than there is to making choices; any one with half a mind could choose a flavour of ice cream for their afternoon treat (blueberry – obviously) but would you let the hungry toddler inside of you decide whether the ice cream man was a nice bloke? No, you'd want to meet him after work and have a drink and ask him those questions about flipping turtles back onto their feet, like in Bladerunner, right?
Oh, I don't know….maybe life just isn't like that.
I know that it isn't for a lot of people.
I know that choice is often a privilege. I think it was Chris Rock who said, 'You won't find many kids with a lactose intolerance in Africa.'
And I know that the more you look into the nature of making decisions the more questions you come out with about things like responsibility and free will.
I'm pretty sure it was John Lennon who said, 'Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.'
I know that, for a lot of people, it really does turn out to be one long climb up a slippery sh*t heap, hoping that the dude above them doesn't fall and take them with him – a long climb where you might just happen to plant flowers and fall in love and get your nose pierced and punch your boss and break your leg and accidentally set fire to things and win awards and build sheds and lose your marbles and stuff, but you probably wouldn't notice any of that. And you probably wouldn't remember deciding to do any of it, would you? When you look back at things you don't see the decision to do things, you just see yourself there doing it, right? 'Oh look, there I am paragliding...oh, haha, that's me brushing my teeth...and there, shouting at the ice cream man.'
I wonder if any of those people, in their last moments, as they slide into a pit filled with other sh*t smeared bodies, look down at the shoes on their feet and think, 'How the hell did they get there?...And what is this cold purple stuff I'm eating?'
Right, as you may have guessed, mrtat has had a few decisions to make lately.
Erm, none of this has helped with any of that in any way – BUT, if you are still here, I am genuinely interested to hear about any decisions you've had to make recently, tough or otherwise…do let me know.
In the meantime, here's another 'there's something sexy going on here' picture...
...it's a bit more obvious this time.
