Sometimes I wish we had access to all the knowledge we needed.
It is difficult working in a vacuum, especially when we know that the decisions we make every day have impacts not just on ourselves, but on those around us and even sometimes those we do not know. We try to come up with the best actions, of course - but I too often find that my even best actions do not work out the way that I had intended.
"You can chose your actions but you cannot choose the consequences of your actions" is attributed to Ayn Rand and usually in the negative sense of decisions - but it is just as true for the good that we try to do as well. Our best thoughts sometimes work no better than if we had never planned at all.
Would more knowledge help? The back of my head tells me that it would. Somehow, it tries to convince me, if only we knew more, we could make informed choices do things that would incline towards better results. If only I knew all, I convince myself, I would take the best actions.
That is a fool's notion, of course, because that is predicated on the fact that having all knowledge is the same as knowing the future, which none of us can do. "Always in motion is the future, difficult to see" said Yoda - and it is true. We act based on the future we see, only to discover that the actions and decisions of others make the future we thought we saw very different.
Is there a solution? Not really - except, if possible, to abandon the belief that we need all knowledge to act or decide. Rather, we need to simply accept that we will do the best with what we have and make do with that.
"Sometimes"? I would argue that's a constant desire, in virtually every aspect of our lives, work and home, family and friends and colleagues.
ReplyDeleteRecently heard a military commander say that the job puts decision making in sharp perspective: You MUST make your decisions long before you have sufficient information in just about every situation, because the enemy won't give you time to be patient. He argued that a similar mindset is necessary in almost every aspect of civilian life as well.
To clarify the previous comment (which upon review failed to complete my answer to the post's question), your initial decision, that you must make the best choice you can given what you know at the time and accept it, is how we must operate in life. The future will always be cloudy, so we put our trust in God and let Him guide our actions as He will.
ReplyDeleteI know. I just seem to always dwell more on the bad decisions I made and less on the good ones.
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