The conclusion to the optionality between Choices.
“You are free to make whatever choice you want, but you are not free from the consequences of the choice.” — Old Proverb.
President Andrew Jackson had two choices, Do what the citizens want and let the central banking system run havoc or Do what the citizen needs and abolish the banking system to make the country debt-free, but get scorned by the very citizens.
Mahatma Gandhi had two choices either keep the promise to his mother or consume the meat and satiate his desire.
The Great Alexandar had to choose either to go back home and live the life of a regular king or venture out to the eastern lands where no king ever dared.
Achilles had to choose to either live a quiet life of security or die with glory as a warrior.
Now the nature of these scenarios of choice has a duality in them. That means they have two choices. An Either/OR scenario. But that is not the case every time.
The instance of choices came to me when I was a child. This is the story of Tenali Ramana. The story goes like this, Tenali was an ordinary Brahmin. He lived a poor life and had to read the scriptures every day. Tenali was fed up with this lifestyle. He wanted wealth and luxury. One day Tenali met a yogi who prescribed him to visit a temple of Kali to satiate his wishes. Tenali ran for the temple, he prayed and prayed.
As the story goes goddess kali got pleased with Tenali’s well-versed chants, so Kali gave her two choices. A bowl of yogurts, or a bowl of milk. The yogurts represent wealth and the milk represents wisdom in one's life. The goddess kali said, “Choose only one.”
This optionality of two choices made Tenali come up with mischief. He asked the goddess to give him the bowls so he can examine which to choose. As soon as he got his hands on the bowls he gulped both the bowls. This made the goddess furious.
Tenali explained his reasons with a stammer, “There is no point in being a naive rich person, the wealth won’t last and there is no point in being a poor scholar, the fellow won’t last.”
This humor won kali’s heart and she forgave Tenali. Therefore Tenali lived a life as an advisor to King Krishnadevaraya, as the tale goes.
The story of choices has been reckoned since the ages. The book Bhagavad Gita essentially describes two choices. Either abstain for every worldly compulsion and become withdrawn or to look at the immensity of the reality and indulge in the pleasures of the sensations.
The Gita promotes the practice of the middle path. The path of the householder. Not because it is the best path to enlightenment but it is the most practical among the extremes. Rare is the individual who can muster his/her intention to live in the extremes. So the way of the householder is prescribed, for the majority.
The story of Tenali struck me because the optionality of the choice can have multiple options.
So if we take a look at our conditions the nature of our choices are:
One: where the optionality doesn’t exist. The decision is final.
Two: Duality, where optionality does exist between two choices.
Three: Multiplicity, where the optionality exists with three or more variations.
The variations of these options can be dependent or independent, preference of one over the other, type of ramification, and practical or immoral. These variations increase the complexity in our optionality.
Now, though the title promises a conclusion, after a careful evaluation, a glance at the optionality is the end in itself.
The intention is not to say do this or do that. The intension is to look at the optionality of our choices.
Therefore evaluate your options, choose one, evaluate the conclusion, and repeat the steps with the new options.
