Nada Amin

February 12, 2002

21F.222 – Personal essay (v. 3)

namin@mit.edu

Indecisiveness

Of course, it’s difficult for everyone to make decisions. In my case,
though, it seems pathological. Ever since I can remember, for every
little choice I have been faced with, from which dishes to order at a
restaurant to the dreaded “what’s you favorite…” questions, I
blocked. Nobody else seemed to be like that. 

As if life decisions weren’t torturous enough, I would sometimes spend
hours agonizing over situations I anticipated or imagined. I still
distinctly remember the monologue of the five-year-old girl I was on my
first day of school in Geneva. Since I didn’t understand French, my
dilemma was whether I should respond “oui” or “non” when a
question was asked. If I said “non”, I might miss something, but if
I said “oui”, anything might happen. So I ruled out “oui”; it
was too risky. With “non”, I would at worst miss something, but
since I didn’t know what it was, then I wouldn’t know what I missed,
so it wouldn’t be bad at all. Right? Or wrong? Should I say “oui”
then?

Despite or perhaps because of cogitations, all my decisions are made in
extremis, on a whim. After long deliberations, I give up: the verdicts
are pending forever – or until the deadline. In the latter case, my
mind keeps spinning between the alternatives until the time is over. My
decision becomes whatever is on my mind at this instant. (I just noticed
that this might be the problem: listening to my mind instead of my
heart.) Even when confronted with the present necessity for a decision
or with more pain or work for the borrowed time, I delay it as much as I
can resist, absurdly hoping a hindrance to the furious breaker of time
or a sublimation of the decision into an evidence.

Thus I ended up in the Latin curriculum in middle school (yet I loved
it!), while I was more suited to the scientific one, my affinity for
sciences having even been firmly established by the “Orientation
Psychologist” and his myriad tests. During the meeting to confirm my
registration, when the Director pronounced the word “scientific”,
the stream of hours I had spent studying for the Latin exam (, which I
did in addition to all the others to leave the option open,) passed
through my mind. I asked to switch.

I can’t really explain my indecisiveness. Perhaps, I don’t want to
define myself. Every decision appears to limit the realm of the
possible. By fear of sacrificing any of my dreams, I pursue none of
them. I merely come to decisions when forced to. Yet, after experiencing
the same melodramatic process of decision-making an infinite number of
times, I now approach it differently. Decisions are like book titles.
They’re exciting because they announce a new beginning. They titillate
the imagination, but only give a very dim, if not wrong, impression –
of course. I’ve never regretted any path my life has taken (maybe, I
am just lucky, and shouldn’t make it a philosophy!). Yet, as in a
book, the parts I cherished were never those I had expected, like in a
book. Expectations, once fulfilled, disintegrate into dull realities,
because reality cannot vie with the imagination. But on their way to
fulfillment, they bring, in the shadow, the joy of the unexpected. In
the midst of eternities, I reflect: Contingency is a blessing – a
chance to reshape a tragedy into a comedy.