The Moment of Choice

You might not be facing a moment of choice right now, but there is a very high probability that you’re going to face tough decisions in the not-too-distant future. We all do. These are likely to be decisions you could not have predicted.

Understanding the psychology of wisdom has shown me that we all possess wisdom-related resources to a greater or lesser extent. Most of us just don’t know it. Not until we are faced with our own pain. Then we must find those resources to rise above the suffering.

You might say, ‘Well, I don’t need to be wise to live a meaningful life.’ In the short term, we are engaged in a struggle between the profane and the divine. We’re invited to realise our highest and purest being as an expression of the divine, but for most of us, the invitation is lost in the post. As American Franciscan friar Richard Rohr puts it, ‘wisdom is the highest expression of human development’. Why not seek it?

In her 1999 book The Cost of Living: The greater common good and the end of imagination, Man Booker Prize–winning Indian novelist Arundhati Roy wrote about how to gain wisdom in the face of life’s pain, injustice, and suffering:

To love, to be loved, to never forget your own insignificance.

To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.

To seek joy in the saddest places.

To pursue beauty to its lair.

To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength never power.

Above all to watch.

To try and understand.

To never look away.

And never, never to forget.

To me, that is an elegant distillation of what it means to choose wisely. That no matter what is going on around you, keep looking, keep searching, and don’t turn away.

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