Making Choices on Your Own

How does one go about making decisions?

There are a lot of ways to make decisions. The most common one is to go around and ask for advice. Yup, that's the most common and highly recommended way. People ask for advice, preferably from a lot of people, before they come to a decision. Mostly, this comes from thinking a lot and digesting people's advice. We call that "weighing our options."

Call me cynical or what, but I now think that when people solicit a lot of advice for an action that they've actually already made up, it is just a mechanism made by man to soothe his confused mind and tell him his decision is more or less valid and correct. People unconsciously do that; they unconsciously pretend to not know what to do but deep inside their hearts they already know what they are going to do.

The truth is, we as human beings are just afraid of making the wrong decisions so we go by popular vote. That is what elections are for, I think; we go by popular vote so we can have the foam for our guilty consciences to plop back on when the shit hits the fan. We cower behind the decisions and choices of the majority so we can say, "we all made that choice, why blame me alone?"

However, that is beside the point now. The big question here is, what happens when you make choices on your own by consulting only one or two people, or no people at all? I tell you, that's where the lies and bullshit of society come into question.

Some people always tells us that they'll support us wherever we are happy. For some time, yes, it is true. However, in my own experience, when I started making my own decisions without consulting some people it turned out that all those people who said they'll be happy with whatever decisions I make suddenly turned sour and angry. The same goes especially true with my "family" -- people that I view now as merely people with the same blood as I do.

My mother used to say she'll be happy with any decision I'll make as long as I'm happy; that now is the biggest bullshit I've ever heard in my whole life. How I wish I could slam her words back at her.

The truth is, people want their voices heard. They want you to know what they think. They want their thoughts to pervade your own, to add weight to the dilemma that you're facing. To the extreme, it could be that they want you to consider what they think as right. In the context of happiness, I tend to think that there are some people that actually want you to think that your happiness is a sum of all their happiness as well.

If they don't like your decision, it will really show no matter what bullshit they can come up with like "we don't like what you've decided on but that's your life" which is indicative of bitterness. Some people even resort to the extreme by harboring ill feelings towards you, and even demanding that you talk it over with them.

Some would even claim to be happy for you even if they are not and do some things that contradict their words; that's what Bhing did when we broke up. She went over to the house when I was away on vacation in Negros and whined to my mother and aunt about how aggravated she is and how she is the losing party in all of this. No matter how much she denies it, she wanted to get back at me and Jesslyn as much as possible. She almost succeeded... almost. That's because I took the worst of hurts away from Jesslyn by telling to get out of the house (she was working for us) the day before Bhing came; instead I took the brunt of everything for her sake.

Yes, my mom might have did something to her during the early days of our relationship, but it was I that had the worst of it. Perhaps part of the hate my mother feels for her is because she was able to avoid what was indeed going to happen if she continued to stay in the house and work for us after my stupid ex couldn't face the music without causing mess for me in return. So she left but left me a lot of mess to handle. How childish.

As for my mom, I'm sure her ego was hurt because Jesslyn left before she could send her out of the house herself. I'm sure she was also mad at me for suggesting that plan of action to Jess, right on the day me and Bhing split up. I already read what was going to happen; to say that I don't know Bhing enough after 2 years is an understatement.

Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned, they say. I say, "Hell hath no fury than a woman scorned who couldn't take things maturely." There are other ways that she could've handled the situation, but she couldn't keep the bitterness from showing. In that sense, Jess is much more mature than she is and Jess happens to be 7 years younger than I am.

It may have hurt, but the persecutions and the pain I had to go through in exchange for my decision has strengthened me beyond my imagination. I'm no longer afraid to make any decisions; I am now confident that I can stand up to it and take responsibility no matter what I do. No matter what decision I am going to make, I'm going to trust to my intuition to recognize what is right from wrong for me and not what people think is right for me.

There's nothing wrong about making decisions. It just happens that some people are offended when you decide on something without taking them into consideration. Sometimes it's right to do that but there are times that you have to decide for yourself and not let their feelings decide for you. If they can't understand what you've decided for yourself, then they don't deserve your concern anymore.