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Friday, May 19, 2000

Living by Default

In discussing decision making with a friend, she advised recognizing emotional decisions as such, and not rationalizing around them. Being generally opposed to black-and-white analyses, I pointed out that the emotional component is but one component of many in any decision, and not often a useful one at that:

The idea of using San Diego as a home base and travelling out from there is by far the more emotionally appealing one. But why? Largely because it is Easy. It is the default -- I don't have to do anything, I don't have to stress about anything, I already own the house there so I will just continue to do so if I do nothing at all; travelling is very light-weight in terms of planning since it's relatively short term so I'd never have to think very far in advance. In short, it's very non-intimidating, nothing to be afraid of, no real challenges that might be hard or weigh on me heavily, no dark, looming uncertainties or remotely likely disasters...

Living by default is almost always emotionally preferable, in advance.

Unfortunately, living by default is almost always emotionally devastating in hind sight.

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