Overload Of Choices

The present generation has access to more choices than any before it - careers, relationships, consumer goods, technology, health, medicine, lifestyles, and freedom to expressions. Yet an abundance of choices can sometimes cause confusion, decision paralysis and even dissatisfaction.

Not everyone struggles with choices. I realised this while sitting in a park bench, listening to a grandfather talking to his grandson.   

Dadaji recalled how his mother taught him to make choices from an early age. Instead of ordering him to wear a particular shirt, she would ask, “Would you like to wear, white green or blue?” When he ignored her call to wash her hands, the first time, the second time she would playfully ask, “Would you like to hop like a bunny to the sink or march like a soldier? She taught him cooperation through choices.

As he grew older, he discovered a deeper truth, what you choose, what you think and what you do, shape who you become.  When his studies suffered, he chose to reduce distractions. He learnt to listen to others without surrendering his judgements to their influence. Every choice carries consequences he explained and a useful question to ask oneself is: Does this choice support the life I want to lead?

We may not control everything that happens to us, but we can often choose how we respond. Our attitude, kindness and treatment of others are also choices.

Why is it for some their choices do not reflect concern for others? Greed makes us accumulate beyond our needs; our jealousy and selfishness weaken our capacity to care and share. We exploit nature without adequately protecting it. To improve life, we must sometimes be willing to make new choices.

In business, competition presence was meant to compete not destroy. The desire for possessing un-ending wealth, often over shadows fair play and voluntary contributions towards society and nation-building. Don’t choose to be bitter; choose to be better.

Dadaji hoped the next generation would make wise choices, measuring success not merely by how much they acquire but also by what they contribute.

His comparison between humans and AI was equally interesting. AI systems select outputs through learned patterns, probabilities and optimization; they do not possess human free will or personal choice in the same sense. Humans, with their lived experiences, conscience and capacity for reflection, have a greater responsibility to distinguish between what they can do and what they ought to do.

Sadly, the abundance of choice for the current generation is becoming a double-edged sword, serving simultaneously, as a profound blessing of freedom and a psychological curse of anxiety.

Gurbani offers another dimension to this- reflection through the relationship between human effort, moral accountability and Hukum – the Divine order. While life unfolds with Hukum, human beings are given the intellect and conscience to make moral and spiritual choices.

Freedom is not merely having more options; it is using our understanding wisely.

As Dadaji and grandson prepared to leave, he looked towards me, perhaps knowing I had been listening and smiled: “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become”.