Decisions, Decisions...


There's this too-common pattern that probably 99% of our society follows, where one will make a long string of decisions that eventually leads to some large, life-altering outcome, which then affects the people around them or causes 'talk', and that person is left defending and glorifying their current life situation to those who don't even deserve an explanation, but granted, there was and is so much advice being offered to this person, but they were/are too fixated in their mindset of "these are my decisions" to even considering following it. Long story short, humans like getting defensive about their hastily made decisions. Whew. That was a mouthful. Bear with me. 

I was reminded of this issue when reading On Dumpster Diving. Lars Eighner neglected to mention what went on behind the scenes, or in other words, the decisions behind how he became homeless. However, while not even knowing the whole story, we all judged him on his glorification of "scavenging." After talking to my friends throughout the discussion, it became glaringly obvious that he was defending his current life situation--as the audience, we were simply defending ours. It is almost not human to concede to criticism surrounding your beliefs or situation, especially when anticipating judgement on 'what you certainly could have done better'. The urge to justify our actions overcomes us. 

Now, imagine you're reading one of those Choose Your Own Adventure books (didn't everyone have those as kids?) The first time you go through it, you don't know any better--you likely end up getting a 'bad' ending and having to start over. The second time you go through the book, you are aware of what mistakes to not make; you may not get your perfect, happy ending, but you do not repeat the same actions when knowing they are flawed. 

As we are not adults yet, our lives remind us of those books. For lack of a better term, many people my age are experiencing a lot of  their "first" harsh slaps of reality. We obviously do not know how to handle such situations that may arise, but yet, we make our decisions quickly, not knowing for certain what they will lead to. Unlike Choose Your Own Adventure, however, there's no way for us to know if our "ending" was good or bad. Rather, we are raised within a flawed society that promotes the existence of solely right and wrong-- in reality, amongst the black and whites are messes of indistinguishable grays. 

It obviously doesn't help that there's now 1,000 ways to judge people nowadays--posting shade, texting the group chat, saving screenshots, facetiming your best friend so that you can 'spill the tea'. Truth being, we're all directionless. At least for now. 

Who are we to judge how our peers are handling their token First Harsh Slap of Reality? 
Breakups, ends of friendships, mental health issues, family issues, fights, relationships... I'd like to see you do it better. 

Comments

  1. molly capelliMarch 3, 2019 at 10:33 AM

    okay wow, first of all YES. I totally agree, who are we to judge other people for their choices and who are they to judge us for ours. We all make choices, and they have consequences good or bad or somewhere in the middle, who's to say? Anyway, you have here another amazing blog post (which I always love reading your blogs) so great job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jessica GeislerMarch 3, 2019 at 2:35 PM

    OH MY GOSH ABBY!!!!! I seriously never know what to say when I read your writing because it is always so well done! As much as I think your view had crossed my mind when I read the story, your writing made such a valid point. I think we are conditioned in society to protect our choices, and you expanded on that idea so well. AMAZING JOB!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Izzy MeremMarch 3, 2019 at 4:04 PM

    WOW ABBY! You are right once again: we need to stop judging other people for the things that they are only trying to experience for their first time. I know for a fact that when someone has to start something new, it is never perfect, so why criticize others when it happens to the best of us? I know I say this all the time, but this is yet another amazing post!

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