HOW TO MAKE DIFFICULT DECISIONS ABOUT LIFE’S DIFFICULT EVENTS
HOW TO MAKE DIFFICULT DECISIONS ABOUT LIFE’S DIFFICULT EVENTS
Part I.
First, we must define what are the life’s difficult events then try to explain why is it so difficult to make a decision about them?
Life difficult events are those events that have potential to influence and change our lives drastically. As I see it, among those events one of the most difficult one is whether or not to get married and to whom to get married to? The other difficult life events could be listed as to immigrate or not, to another country? What college or university to attend? What profession to pick? and many more individual life’s events.
Difficult decisions are those decisions that require long period of thinking, information gathering, factoring in all these information into a thinking process, absence of a precise methods of decision making and, not being able to remain objective in our thinking.
We live in a digital information century, we are constantly being bombarded with useless and misguided information, we are overloaded with information which we don’t need . What we need is shared experiences and shared knowledge, which are very difficult to come by. Therefore I decided to share my personal experience about my life’s difficult decision with my readers.
My decision to immigrate to the USA was not that difficult because my motherland was in political turmoil at that time and I was forced to immigrate. But when I arrived to the USA as a bachelor, I immediately felt terribly lonely. I felt deep cultural differences and had cultural clashes.
I was born in a small Caucasian village in Eastern Turkey. My great parents were Caucasian immigrants. I was raised with traditional Caucasian culture that I must always respect and remain loyal to my parents, and to the members of my family and elderly. A Caucasian man should never show any sign of fear, anger and weakness. A Caucasian man should know how to ride a horse. A Caucasian man should never raise his hand against a woman. Honor, friendships and hospitality are most important in a Caucasian’s life.
I badly needed a cultural connection. I needed somebody who has been raised with the same cultural norms to marry to end my loneliness.
Marriage decision already had been made by me. But ”who is this special some one and how would I find her and, even if I find her, would she like me, would she fall in love with me?” were very big questions for me.
Part II
LOVE AND MARRIAGE.
“Marriage is an empty box, it remains empty unless you put more in it than you take it out.”
As I see it, falling in love is not really necessary for marriage decision. Love and marriage do not always go hand in hand all the time, as assumed. Love is a very complex feeling - it recognizes no reasoning. Complex and strong emotions create a biased mental environment that prevents objective thinking; it only allows emotional decisions. Yet marriage decisions have to be made with a neutral mental environment, objective criteria, reasoning and thinking. Additionally love, in most cases, does not last long; in a year or so, it disappears and the reality sets in. If married couples have not done their hard thinking and objective decision making to find out what do they have in common, before marriage disappointments, arguments and criticisms set in, and marriage usually end up with divorce. But if they have done their homework before getting married, love is replaced with caring and lasting relationship and companionship.
To me, love with its romantic attractions, sexual desires and jealousy has an evolutionary purpose. It creates a lasting relationship to assure that children are taken care, raised and fed by the parents to reach the reproductive age so that the future of human species is assured.
In modern times, the meaning of love has changed, like and love have been used interchangeably. There are many kinds of love, such as a love of parents, love of country, love of music , etc... Another kind of love called, platonic love which describes admiration and friendships without sexual connotations.. Platonic love was named after the ancient Greek philosopher Plato who never used the term but described the presence of this kind of lasting love.
Part III.
MARRIAGE DECISION
I strongly believe that a marriage decision has to be made with a neutral mental environment and with objective criteria.
To me, the most important criteria that carries the most weight in this decision is, what do I and her have in common?” Other criteria should be, what personal, intellectual and educational characteristics do you value, the most? Since genetic inheritance is very important in our life, what she and her parents have accomplished in their lives? What is their education level? Is physical or mental beauty, more important for you? Can she cook and feed her family? And many more individual questions.
Before I consider marrying anyone, I planned to use the ancient pros-versus- cons list, with the above mention criteria, research and think very hard on them, before I made a decision. With this idea in mind, I searched for an immigrant community in the USA, attended their meetings and I had the opportunity to meet two eligible candidates. In spite of all my careful preparations, I could not decide which one to propose marriage. After a year of deliberation, I decided that no one is perfect, we all have our deficiencies, we will try to learn how to compromise. The art of successful marriage is to know how to compromise and how to live with your differences.
While preparing this article, I decided to search the literature on this subject to see if there are any new methods, to help us to make difficult decisions easier. Over the past decades, science has given us some tools to make better decisions. But they are mostly prompts, hacks, nudges and algorithms. There is no fool proof methods for life’s difficult choices and decisions. But it is very important to contemplate alternative choices, not to stick to one decision, always have two plans, in case plan A does not work, there is always plan B.
I found psychologist Dr. Kline’s idea to detect potential flaws in the decision making process very interesting. He proposed to imitate “post-mortem exam and analyses” in medicine, in a form of a pre-mortem exam. In another words, a decision made should imagine that in a few months in the future, the decision failed. The decision maker should analyze, why has it failed, what were the flaws in the decision, and how can they be corrected?
These new tools could help us to make better decisions; but the ancient method of pros-and-cons list, is still a gold standard for difficult decision making.
