There are times when a seemingly ordinary statement makes a tremendous impact on you or atleast gets you into a contemplative mood. Sometime ago, it came in the form of a dialogue in a mega-serial. The central female character is torn between the love for her foster mother and fiancé (not to mention her own feelings). She finds herself confiding in a stranger who offers a “simple” solution – “In life, when decision-making gets tough, work out an equation as to how many people will be happy versus the disappointed ones; the more the number of satisfied people, the better the decision…”
For some reason, the above has been stuck in memory for a while now and I often wonder if the statement has any relevance in my decision-making attempts. Is it important to make others happy at the cost of your own interests, how much ever “justified” they might be?
6 comments:
whoa! deep indeed! and i'd say yes..sometimes decision making gets affected in trying to strike a balance between the number of disappointed vs. happy people... but then that's just me..
looking at a slightly related perspective.. (or maybe not..cant make up my mind :D).. it just depends on how "removed" the person making the decision is or how dissociated to his/her surroundings/family/friends/.././../.. this person is.. bottomline if we live our life just for ourselves then whatever decision we make cant be good or bad.. it only affects us.. isnt it ? :)
What works for one may not work for the other. I've lived all my life taking decisions to please people and now I am at a point where I feel strongly that I should not worry about whether people will be pleased by my decision or not. I think it just depends on where each person is. You might be better off taking a decision that pleases more people and I might be better off not doing it.
The equation has to have a slight modification. You just need to add some weights to the variables(here hte ppl affected) and I guess the equation will look fine.
But hey, this kind of brings the problem to suare one. ;-) (how much weight shud I associate to person closer to me vs a third person)
Hmm if it hadn't been a KB serial I probably would never have given it a 2nd thought.
A - agree on the count that we complicate life ourselves by too much thinking ;)
D - Sometimes it is nice to know that there are so many people around you - i'm actually missing it now - in a literal sense i mean!
SB- guess that's how it should be interpreted...btw, at this rate, you can get into dialogue writing yourself! ;)
I feel its better to take decisions considering only people who are close to us. :)) The no. of ppl pleased, the degree of satisfaction- the quantity, as it were.. doesnt matter. I follow my mind. :))
Viji - there are times when only the concerned person knows best...no one else can decide whats right/wrong...wonder if it is more so at a time when we are culturally so away from our roots and yet to let go completely...?
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