# 225: Sane Choices
Story behind the Passage
Before I say anything: Nobody in the “free world” nowadays has the right to compare his/her situation with the one of Viktor Frankl while he was in the concentration camp. So, I just want to make clear that anything I am going to write is inspired by Frankl’s teachings but in no way comparative. I cannot remember when exactly I read Frankl. Probably when I first came in touch with positive psychology and starting my own “Search for Meaning.” Frankl did inspire the field, as I wrote in one of my previous posts. But today, I thought of his book because I am more than ever aware of the fact that life is about making choices. Not that I did not know about this before. The realization is rather that I have found out that making choices really depends on your state of mind.
I used to be a very good decision maker when I was younger, maybe too young. I was known to make very clear decisions within the blink of an eye. There was no indeterminacy, no insecurity, no “I have to ask this and that person for advice.” And the choices were not bad, they led to results, no doubt. Then, life somehow happened to me and my choice making became vague. I would even say, my ability to make “sane” choices was gone for a long time. I hesitated to use the word sane in the title but somehow it was the most fitting one to choose, even though it might look a bit dramatic. But even choosing titles is something that requires some clear stance. And the same thing applies to all other life decisions, including one’s career.
When I use the word “sane” I mean both: The ability to think clearly and with a decent knowledge base. I am using the word sane here in contrast to “emotional.” I know this might sound weird because I am always the one arguing in favor of not suppressing emotions and not thinking in a binary mode. But I am coming to realize that what I mean by “emotions” is rather intuition. There are huge differences between the two, as you might or might not know. What I know, however, is that emotions come like a storm and they go just as quickly. The conseuences of your (life) decisions stay a lot longer — if not all your life. So, it makes sense to question your emotions as ultimate “consultants” for decision making, right?
The thing is, I cannot remember if my early decision-making strength involved emotions or intuition. My guess is, the latter one is the case. But at some point, I was merely a rational decision-making machine. And that probably led to the fact that I then fell into the opposite extreme and made emotions my compass to compensate for what I had missed. What this means is that I have to slightly revise my own philosophy of fiercely arguing against the Cartesian dualism — at least in some way. I am still opposed to the dualism of body and mind but I am less strict about the fact that rationality is important.
Maybe I have come to this point because there is so much empty bullshit talk around me. I am just getting so sick of people who think they know it all and who even make a lot of money with their lack of knowledge while never having set foot into a university. I am not saying that universities give you the ultimate wisdom and I am not saying that I know it all. But somehow there used to be qualities you learned there based on passing exams and putting some work into your course work. Most of these standards seem to be gone now because they are just not cool anymore. And people who are “cool” do not even consider going to university anyway. They prefer paying money for supposedly innovative private universities or universities of applied sciences where they find what they think creates value.
I have gone through all the stages of being excited about these novelties and innovations as well, only to find out how stupid the people are who drive them — not in all cases, of course. And by ‘stupid’ I mean: uneducated. This is the word I am using. I am not saying they are not clever or intelligent. For sure, in order to run and scale a business, including the business of education, you need to be clever. But education is a different cup of coffee. Education includes stuff like knowing about history, knowing about politics, knowing about technology, religion, the arts, and also business, yes, for sure, and language and culture too. You might think that I am just mentioning these things because these are my favorite subjects. But the truth is: I did not believe in this for a long time myself until I figured out that these things really matter.
This has brought back my sense of sanity.
That also means I am regretting it a bit that I have wasted some time with too many emotions which made me excited about things that do not deserve much excitement. But it simply took time to understand all this. I am thus thinking a lot about this proverb these days:
“Grass does not grow faster if you pull on it.”
Of course, I would have wished fore my insights, even my disillusionment, to come sooner, but it simply did not happen. It took round about three years now to collect all the pieces of the puzzle, flip them around, twist and turn them, and then put them in their proper place. Now the picture looks fairly complete, I feel sane again and my decision-making strength seems to be back. But that is only partly due to all these insights. What is more is that these insights have taught me again who I am. If I actually knew that before, I do not know now. I just know that I feel relieved but not insanely happy or unhappy about it. And that truly makes me feel peaceful. It makes me look at people like Frankl with even more admiration.
My Learnings
“There were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you become the plaything to circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.” The thing that strikes me so much now that I am rereading this passage again and again is that, in fact, every minute you have the choice of making choices. Sometimes you might think that this is only the case when “big” choices confront you, e.g., which job to take, which house to buy, whom to marry and so on. But in fact, every minute of the day is filled with millions of micro decisions. Each and every one of them will lead to a different outcome for your life. Most of them will impact your life quality in some way. Whenever you decide to do something that your inner self did not really want to do, you will suffer a little bit. It might not be tragic but the point is, if you constantly do that, you will forget what you actually like or dislike.
The same, however, happens when you only decide according to some emotional issue, e.g., by seeking pleasure all the time. This is where my mini-theory about sanity above comes in. If you have figured out (again) who you truly are, this will not pose a problem for you because you might simply not be the type who is chasing pleasure all the time in the sense of “chilling” or “taking it easy.” Yes, human beings in general are pleasure seekers but pleasure means something different for each and every one. If pleasure for you means competing in a game or solving some really tricky problem at work, that is your definition. The only thing you have to do to fully enjoy this is: being yourself.
That is the tough part.
We are constantly confronted with so many nice choices of who we could be. There are nice people, creative people, smart people, active people, funny people, industrious people… So, you can really pick and choose. The problem is: Many of these alternatives might look so much more attractive to you. Your own inner self might not be what you want to be when faced with these alternatives. I am not even saying that this is a matter of social conditioning or likeability, i.e., that you are trying to be someone else simply because you think that will give you more social acceptance. Or, maybe, this is actually what I am saying, I do not know…
What I know, because I have experienced it frequently but with varying intensity, is that there comes a point when all these choices look wrong to you because your old self wants to come to the surface again. No matter how much you might have changed in the past, there is some core in you that is not replacable. That has nothing to do with identifying with someone else or with building up some wishful ego. I am just saying that your intuition, not your emotions, tell you what “feels” like yourself. And then, you will immediately realize which choices are right for you, no matter how much your emotions might get you excited about being someone else.
Now, I have not talked about Frankl yet, but that is just on the surface. I have been talking about Frankl all the time because he exactly demonstrated this incredible strength of being who he was in the middle of the concentration camp. He was seeing around him what was happening to the others and he knew that he had only one chance: choosing to live, wanting to survive with all his energy, every day. There was this tacit knowledge that if he had simply made the decision that he would not survive, this would probably have become true. He did not allow anyone to take away his true self, his dignity. And that also means he knew who he was — not a “typical inmate.”
Sometimes I wonder why institutions nowadays can still manage to rob people of their real selves so quickly. People literally become “inmates,” prisoners of companies, universities, and all kinds of other institutions. They let others take away their dignity within the blink of an eye. But why am I talking about others? It happened to me too. Well, at least, I was at the verge of letting it happen. But I decided to fight. The point was, this also led me away from my self. Yes, I saved my dignity in one sphere and then I almost lost it in another. This all happened because I allowed my emotions to take over which was not a good move. Simply because there is too much negative emotion in one sphere it does not mean you should rush to the extreme and only seek positive (false) emotions somewhere else.
I guess, it all boils down to what people call “strength” of character. And no matter how much we as social beings always run the risk of trying to make ourselves liked by others, we first have to learn to truly like ourselves. Only then can you fully see who you are and make choices accordingly. This will bring you your inner freedom. Whether this will also lead to outer freedom, I do not know. In Frankl’s case, it did. He survived and he helped millions of people not only with his story but with the work he did based on his experience. I do not know where the path will take me but, for sure, I feel like I have popped some bubble that separated me from someone I once was and that I can see very clearly again — even more clearly than ever, despite all necessary change.
Hello, self, nice to have you back.
Reflection Questions
1) Which choices do you constantly make which make you feel like they are not in line with who you really are?
2) What does freedom mean to your life?
3) Do you think decisions without emotions are possible for human beings?