Decision Is Not A Mere Justification

            Decision, decide, should have been two very familiar words to us. We make choices everyday based on preferences, purpose, cost and benefit, as well as other considerations. We often question whether or not our decision is correct and how it will results in the future. Usually, driven by the desire to always make the right decision, we list hundreds of possible points to justify our choices. We turn decision making process into a voting inside our head. Which side will be the winner depends on how many justifications we can think of to support it in order to stand still.

                What we forget is that justifications is merely a matter of logic. Just like flowing water in a stream that can be redirected into any direction we want if we have a pump, so does the flow of logic that generates a justification. This requires quite a high intelligence, but the smarter someone gets or he thinks he is, the more confusing decision making can get. It is because he/she can always argues or justifies both sides with equally powerful justifications. A logic that is used to make a justification supporting certain side can also be turned against the exact same side and can give birth to doubts and never-ending questions. A person who decides solely based on justifications is usually less decisive and doesn’t have quite strong stance. Being able to justify one side more than the opposite is not an achievement. That means he/she has not been able to identify any other possible justifications thoroughly, especially the one that is against his/her stance. Complicated isn’t it? And on top of that less effective.

            Decision is not a mere justification, means that justification should never be used as an ultimate waepon moreover as the only parameter to make a decision. Have anyone ever decide on something just because it feels right eventhough we can not think of any justification yet to support it? Yes, I believe everybody has. It is called deciding based on our gut. It might sounds silly, but it is actually a natural mechanism for human’s brain to generate a decision. Our brain subconsciously have the ability to access memories and to analyze a situation way faster than what our conscious mind can keep up with. If we ever swear long ago to have certain principals in living or we ever have memories about certain passions as well as when we decide to achieve certain goals, our brain have access it all without us realizing and put it into consideration before sending it back to our conscious thought as guts or feeling of what is right to do. Amazing isn’t it? This is the first step of making a good decision. 

            For the next step, we should think of what we want by making that decision. What purpose we want to achieve and which way suit our principals best. This is the starting point of considering any possible justifications. A good decision is suppose to make us enjoy the final result as well as the process that we will have to go through. The process may not be pretty and not less filled with obstacles, but we can enjoy it enough to keep our determination up. It is very important that every decision we make suits our own personal ways, regardless of what other people may think. Be brave and be bold. Every human is created to be unique and fated to be different. We are only granted with one lifetime, so why do we choose to spend it under other people’s shadow and keep watching their back that blocks us from a wider view about the world.

                Won’t life be fair if a good decision can only be made by those who can generate sophisticated justifications?  Because every people is created differently . Different in physical state, intelligence, tallent, and perspective. Meanwhile, the need to make a decision is universal. From a simple choice into a complicated life changing decision. Therefore, God never set a qualification that decision should only be made by those with high intelligence. In the opposite, won’t it be better to let someone that is decisive and responsible to decide? And aevery person have the same chance to develop that quality if he/she is eager to learn and reflects from every mistakes that was made. The ability to recognize our ourself, potentials, passion, and goals are way more important, especially if we want to learn to be decisive. Because life itself is like a never-ending learning at a classroom, and the hardest subject is to learn about our own personality. 

God’s Greatest Gift : “Freewill”

             

               Life is like driving a car. We can go everywhere we want to and always have the choice whether we will go by the rules or not. Of course, there will be consequences if we choose to break the rules on the road, but isn’t life also all about dealing with consequences? The important thing is that the freedom to decide and to choose have always been on our hand since the beginning whether we realize it or not. Sometimes, when the traffic light turned red we feel like there is no other choice other than to stop. Or may be, when we stuck in traffic jam it seems like there is no other way other than wait for it to unravel. This is called a boundary. For sure, everybody have a boundary in their life. A solid brick wall that we feel impossible to break through. But, life boundaries are different than the real brick wall. Instead of being grounded in a solid foundation, life boundaries are planned in our mind. What we often forget is that this boundaries can extent to unlimited distance. The question is on how much efforts have we put to push this imaginary wall.

               

               The freedom to choose and decide can not be taken from our hands, unless we give it up. We can wish and dreams almost about everything in ourlife, and the freedom to bring it into reality have always been ours. This is called free-will. With this God’s greatest gift, we can almost do and achieve anything in life, limited to what boundaries we have in mind. When we bumped into  problems or confused in an intersection, we are actually being tested whether we will still have a strong hold onto our believe or let those problems lead us astray. Every problem and consequences we have today is the result of yesterday’s decision. But, that does not mean that we have made a wrong decision or taking a wrong turn at that intersection. There is no right or wrong in making a decision. There is only harder and easier path to cross or shorter and longer road to travel. Either way takes us into the same destination. Be eager to make a choice, because it has never been too late.

The Art of Moving On : The First Step

             Words are the most complicated things in the world. With a little magic known as“rephrase”, it will reveal a secret that anchored way too deep for anyone to see or to understand. A person may say a lot of things but actually share nothing, as well as someone that have a few words to say but filled with valuable meanings. “what” and “if” into “what if”, a word that can haunt someone for the rest of their life or the word “move” and “on” into “move on”, one of the hardest things to do in life.

              Standing alone, the word “move” might sounds familiar and natural for anyone to be able to do. An addition of another word will reveals how tricky it may get. Someone commonly feels the necessity to move on right after something bad or tragic happen. The deffinition of bad or tragic can varies from breaking up with girlfriend or boyfriend, failing in career, until the extent of loosing someone we hold dear. The difference in interpretation itself is not the issue as all come from the believe that everyone must continue with their life at some point and grab every good opportunities for a better life in the future.

             Did, I say a better life? Yes, like it or not the ability to move on is related to happiness itself. Happiness is the best parameter to measure the quality of life. It is very relative depends on the person who become the subject, and that is why I call it best. Human is a very unique and distinct creature from one and another, so it is only right to also use the most unique and distinct parameter to measure the quality of someone’s life.

           Why is it hard to move on? Moving on means not only that we accept what has happen to us but also letting it go as it is. It is simply hard because the truth or facts are not always fun to be known as well as to be accepted. The first rule about moving on is that, regardless how hard it is, no one have the rights to tell other people when is the right time to move on. Forgetting what happen in the past is easy but to completely overcome the guilt, anger, or hatred that it caused is something else. And to do that, someone must decide by it’s consience call. Only then he/she will know when is the right time to forget, forgive and emerge as a stronger individual.

             

              Some may choose to escape and some are struggling to overcome a bitter experience. If you watch movies a lot, you may think think that escape from the past is always identical as being a coward. Well, you are not wrong but not necessarily right either. Depends on how your self-translation give meaning toward “escape”. Going somewhere far, put some distance and starting a new life can be an effective way. It is quiet suggested to be honest, as long as the main intention is purely to recover and forget the unbearable past. Be sure we have already paid all debt and responsibility that turn out to be ours. Not escaping from a responsibility after what we have done. Bussiness is bussiness, so does responsibility. It haunts like a ghost driven by an unfinished bussiness. Therefore, the intention to move on is just like a dry leaves blown by shivering early spring wind. It will be hard to grab. Even so, it is still best to overcome what happen and continue life as it was before. Meaning that you are bold enough to take a strong stance that those happening will not make a burden for you. Or if it is, then you prove that you are strong enough to bear that. Those life-dumbell will make your heart even stronger as you are trained to take steps everyday carrying those on your shoulder.

            Forcing ourself to move on too fast is like pointing a gun in front of our face. We can hold it for a while, but eventually we are only waiting when it will go off again. There are a lot of people who feel like they can’t even understand themself. So, it is least wise for other people to act like knowing everything about a person. The best can be done after all is trying to care and understand. Moving on is indeed important to be done, but for that take your time to feel, reflect, learn, and decide when is the right time to take one step ahead.

            Life is like running in a repeated track. It is not solely on the matter of how you rush yourself toward the finish line. What matter is that you can actually make it to the finish line and be prepared to step forward onto the next lap. Humans heart is fragile from the beginning. How to make it stronger, we decide. And in every decision, it is always best to think over it first before taking any action, because some things just do not have undo button. So, take your time and use it with wisdom.

What Is It Mean To Be “Me”?

             

                 Every single day that we are living in is always meant for something to happen, for better or worse, whether we wish for it or not. Tons of experiences and never-be-forgotten happenings makes our life more colorful regardless of which color have been put into drawings by those life experiences. It can been bright colors that make our life more fun, cheerful and make our heart more settle or the vice versa, less-bright colors that make life seems so gloomy, but not less filled with the learning of wisdom. Each color with no doubt contributes to what we have become today.

                As life can be described as a never-ending experience, so does the learning process itself that will determine who we are going to be in the future and what characters will be drawn in our self-canvas. This process have taken place and still taking place in everybody’s life crossing the boundary of age. This, of course have mostlikely shattered the common believe that only teenagers and youths that are dwelling with the process of finding their true identity. The difference between youths and the elder is on the way they deal with every happening they cross by in life. The elder with more wisdoms and more experiences they have been through, can be wiser, calmer and see things from a wider perspective. Means that they are not so eagerly to judge something as right or wrong, bad or good and can see better through the meaning of a happening. Meanwhile, younger people might be more eager in giving judgement and more emotional in dealing with things. But some extraordinary people can give no less widom than the elder since they are very young. Because since young age, they have aleady knew what to do and who to become.

            Now we have finally understand why it is so important to recognize who we really are and what it means to be ourself. A grasp of understanding about what kind of person we want to be in the future, will give us a life guidance in the process of our character’s formation. Because with so many different experiences and problems we are going to face and the new point of view that will be brought by them, there is no warranty that it will shape us into a better person as we are all hoping. In some cases, it makes us forget who we are, and turns us into someone else or worse, into someone we never wish to become.

                First of all, being ourself means that we are being honest to other people as well as our self about our true character. When we are able to put aside the need to put a mask to be someone else so that other people will think about us the way we want them to think. This necessities was born out of the desire to be liked by others, admired or a simple making impression purpose. In fact, other people rarely fancying to be close with a person of such character. Let’s look deeper why. When people put a mask to cover their true self, what they did was amplifying their fear to reveal their true identity. So, in every interaction, conversation or chit chat with other people, we can notice that this kind of person never actually share anything about themselves. Further interaction will show that their actions are often not consistant with their words. Person of such characters hardly can be trusted by other people because others feel like they don’t really know anything about this person and whether or not such person can be trusted with something important or private matters. So, readers can see how a person that try to impress others by being someone else end up to be a person that actually impress no one and lonely in life. But, it doesn’t mean that this kind of person is actually bad in personalities. It is only that they are trying to cover their inconfidence of what they thought to be their weaknesses. They want to be seen strong and just as stand out as the others. Their wants is no less noble, that they want to please others and make other people to like them. As human that share life with other people, we should help this kind of person by willingly become their friends, share love and friendship that they are craving so badly, and show them that there will always be people who will gladly accept them for whoever they are. We should never treat them with hatred, for enough hatred have already filled their heart. Life is so much fun and no one have to feel alone.

                  Second of all, being ourself does not simply means that we stick only to a single believe about what is the right thing to do or how to deal with problems in our personal way. It means that we are brave enough to do what our consience tells us to do as we consider those things are right. Other people may forbid us to do what we judge to be right or leading us astray, but if we are to be truly being ourself then it is our heart that will lead our action regardless of what people say. This is called as having principles in life. Every people have their own parameter to identify what is right and wrong, and their own consideration to see beyond a certain problem to determine which action will bring better result and minimize harm. Thus, the parameter varies in each individuals. In other words, we may say that every person actually have principles of their own, even the most faint-hearted person. The difference will be on how much courage does one hold to follow those principles. When we decide that we will not smoke for example, or that we will always treat people with kindness, become a good brother or sister, stay away from corruptions at work, those are when we are said to have principles. In a lot of different circumtances, we are tested. When we are overruled by anger and hatred or a simple bad mood problem, can we still smile at other people and treat them with kindness? When our need of money is dire and we are offered such an easy way out, will we let our path to bend to a malicious will? Only by believing that we are strong enough to follow our noble principles eventhough it means that we will have to take a harder different paths than other people, we will be able pass the test. “Be proud To be Different!”

               The third and the hardest thing about being ourself is on how we are brave enough to acknowledge every mistake that we make and from there, looking forward to change. As life is very dynamic and everyday we learn about something new, it is mostlikely that as we go on with our life we will also find some new truths in our journey. The development of science is best to give an example about this new truths. How we believe five hundreds years ago that the earth was the center of the universe and the sun was revoluting arround it have been proven wrong by Galileo Galilei with his telescope. It is just an example to explain that as humans are advancing into the future, they will learn a lot of new things and from it finally find the truth that they are seeking. But it is the willingness of humans to acknowledge their mistakes in the past that make them able to really accept the truth and become better in the future. The same thing applies to our life experience that teach us not to be too arrogant so that we are not blinded from what is the right thing to believe in life. As it was said earlier that life is a never-ending life experience, our seeking about the truth itself will never end.

               So, in the end of this writing we can grasp a new understanding about “What is it means to be myself?”. We understand that being ourself means that we are being honest about who we really are toward  other people as well as ourself. We are being honest that we have principles that will lead our action and that principles will apply in any circumtancess with no exception. We are also noble enough to acknowledge our mistakes if we figure that some of our principles might not be right and from that we learn to fix it in order to move forward in the future as a better person.