CHOICES... CHOICES...

I was taught once that human beings are born with five basic needs, survival (which includes food and shelter), fun, love & belonging, power and freedom. We all experience these in various degrees and these change and shift on every person. Depending on who you are you may experience a high degree of love & belonging, while another craves desperately for power.

Then society and the information we are bombarded with daily, presents us with new choices. Sometimes we store images in our heads of things we have perceived as pleasurable and want to experience in the non-so distant future. But depending on where your needs lean towards, that’s where your choice will probably be headed to.

When it comes to making a choice, we ultimately wish to please one person and one person alone, us. No matter the excuses we give society or those around us, in the end is about satisfying our basic needs. Choices based on pleasing others or satisfying other people’s needs will ultimately leave you unsatisfied and empty, unless of course the choice you made to make a person happy ultimately meets one of the 5 basic needs, then you are pretty much covered… according to this theory.

But that is not always the case, choosing is always hard. I am presented with difficult choices both in SL and RL on a daily basis and making the right choice, or at least the one I think is right for those who depend on me, doesn’t happen without sacrificing a thing or two. Pondering all options and getting advice from friends and those involved does help at times, however it is you the one left with the actual choosing part, where difficulty lies.

After having made a wrong turn once or twice -or even more than that- recent events during this weekend have come to prove that successful choosing is supported by this “Choice Theory”, mentioned above. You have to make your choice based on the fact that it will both satisfy your needs and make you happy. But what if you are a parent -as it is my case- and your choice involves your child and his/her happiness? i.e. choosing something that you are sure will be good for them but they might not like; how about making choices that you are sure your friends won’t approve of, but that you are absolutely sure that they will come to accept eventually as it has made you happy?

Whether it is SL or RL, focus your choices on one basic principle, satisfying your 5 basic needs (if not, at least one), because maybe there is no greater purpose in life, but it is in my honest opinion that if your choosing is not satisfying you, then what’s the point? Ayn Rand, a Russian-American Novelist said once “Every man builds his world in his own image. He has the power to choose, but no power to escape the necessity of choice.”

I’ll continue making my choices based on my principles, not anyone else’s; some people may not understand them or agree, but these are my choices to make, no one can do that for you… in that -and hence supporting the 5 needs theory- choosing is like eating, YOU have to do it on your own.

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