Just like in
my other article about life as a series of events, here is another representation of life, but now in terms of decisions.
If you think about your life in a global sense, that is, take your life as a whole, you can quickly identify all the key events that changed the previous flow of your life into something new. These events have been most likely caused by you making a certain decision at some point. For example, you remember that you decided to get a degree from a university. Your life changed right after that, you started going to classes, you started learning new things, you met a bunch of new people, etc. Deciding to go to a university is a major decision to make. Along with major decisions, there are thousands of other decisions that you make, some are somewhat important, some are unimportant at all. However, what I'm trying to look at, is when decisions are coupled, that is, relationships of one decision to another are identified. The most important relationship that must be looked at is dependency of one decision on another.
Sometimes, it may so happen, that a very unimportant decision may lead to another one, that can potentially change your life. Here is an illustration. You wake up one morning and decide that you feel like you are going to a book store to buy some book or just spend some time selecting. You can easily go there the following day, but you decide that it must be today. The decision is very tiny in significance. It doesn't change your life in any major way. However, when you are in the store, you meet a girl(if you are a man) or a man(if you are a girl). You like him/her and you decide to approach him/her for introduction. That is another decision that you make that by itself doesn't really carry too much importance. Long story short, after some time(and some decisions) you decide to get married. Now that is a very important decision, since it changes your life significantly. Now think about the whole situation - from the moment you wake up on that blessed morning till the time you get married. A series of tiny, unimportant decisions led to a major decision that has changed your life. If you hadn't decided to go to a book store that morning , your life would have gone a different route. Some people call it fate, but I don't really believe in fate. Fate is something beyond your control and you sure can control what decisions you are making. What I agree with is that in the example, which I just mentioned, you can not predict the future. You can't possibly know which decisions that you make on a daily basis will lead to major changes in your life. In other cases, though, you have a pretty good idea of a potential outcome. For example, getting a university degree usually guarantees better position and better pay.
Now think about your life, from the very beginning to the very end, from the standpoint of your decisions. You know pretty well what happened in the past and you can easily identify the decisions that you had made which have caused your life to change. On the other hand, you have a pretty vague idea about what is going to happen in the future. Forget about the time when you were a kid and you couldn't really decide much for yourself and don't forget about the fact that your body is slowly getting old and thus getting you closer to your death. Now ask yourself a question: "do I want the rest of my life(my future) to look just like my past?" Think carefully what that question asks and answer it. If the answer is yes, you are a happy person, you don't need any major changes in your life, no need to search for new opportunities, new decisions. If the answer is no, consider the following:
If your day looks just like another day after it and before it, you are preventing anything new from happening to you. You will have a very slim chance of changing anything in your life unless you start doing something about it. And the only thing you can do is make a decision. Go to a new place, read a new book, meet new people,
do something different. If a day passes by and there is nothing to remember it by, you have just wasted that day. If your days are alike, you have used up all the possible opportunities that such days give you. The only way to start another series of decisions, which will lead to major changes in your life is by making seemingly unimportant decisions
now. Try to break from usual days full of regular decisions, start making different decisions,
enrich your life.