The Responsibility of Decision Making

If we are free to choose our values, and therefore completely consciously responsible for whatever decision we make, then decision-making is both a skill and a huge responsibility. We’re confronted not just with the decision itself, which is the surface-level part of the process, we’re also confronted with the question of what we’re going to choose to value.

We often assume we already have our values sorted out somewhere inside of us and, with enough soul-searching, we can find them. This is certainly true on one level. We all value things whether we know it or not and often act in accordance with those values without any kind of consideration at all. But, when we’re making a conscious choice to do something (or not do something) we get to choose what we are /going/ to value.

We all have regrets, right? We all have decisions we wish we could go back and re-make. That is, unless we’ve just come to a place of radical acceptance and let that stuff go (which is a good thing). The beauty of this way of looking at things is that we can choose a new set of values to act out of so that we’re not acting out of the values of the things we’ve previously regretted. That is the responsibility. We’re responsible for making decisions in accordance with what we /want/ to value, not just what we think we already value.

I’m going to pause here. All this typing is making me tired.