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Dec. 4th, 2003 08:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewduckerDecisions, decisions, decisions.
We all have to make them, small ones on a fairly constant basis, large ones hopefully a little wider apart. They're the junctions of the world, where we choose to make our turnings, and if you joined all your decisions together, you'd see the shape of your life, or at least of those bits of your life you were responsible for.
As I've slowly grown more responsible (or possibly grown more aware of my responsibility), I've become more aware of and focussed on decisions. I found them to be fascinating insights into character - after all, what tells us more about a character than what they choose to do (or not to do). When running and playing games I became interested in the moral choices that people would make, in putting characters into situations where there either was no right answer, or where characters would come up with solutions the others would find abhorrent.
The same was also true of stories in other media - books, comics and films. I lost a lot of interest in stories without a moral dimension - ones where there were no interesting choices to make. I re-read the Narnia series and became disappointed that, as the series progressed, the characters went from making decisions that affected the outcome of events to being pushed from plot point to plot point, being educated at each stage rather than taking any actual part in events.
[Poll #214798]
We all have to make them, small ones on a fairly constant basis, large ones hopefully a little wider apart. They're the junctions of the world, where we choose to make our turnings, and if you joined all your decisions together, you'd see the shape of your life, or at least of those bits of your life you were responsible for.
As I've slowly grown more responsible (or possibly grown more aware of my responsibility), I've become more aware of and focussed on decisions. I found them to be fascinating insights into character - after all, what tells us more about a character than what they choose to do (or not to do). When running and playing games I became interested in the moral choices that people would make, in putting characters into situations where there either was no right answer, or where characters would come up with solutions the others would find abhorrent.
The same was also true of stories in other media - books, comics and films. I lost a lot of interest in stories without a moral dimension - ones where there were no interesting choices to make. I re-read the Narnia series and became disappointed that, as the series progressed, the characters went from making decisions that affected the outcome of events to being pushed from plot point to plot point, being educated at each stage rather than taking any actual part in events.
[Poll #214798]
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Date: 2003-12-04 12:56 am (UTC)After all I have made decisions about getting married and having children, but in a way those were easy decisions at the time, because they were things I'd always wanted to do.
Similarly, going to university was just something that everyone in our family did. I quite liked the idea, but I never really decided as such.
The thing about the decision to take up Judo when I went to university was that it was very difficult and made me into a very different person that the one I'd been before.
I was very, very scared of men when I first went to university, and with good reason given my previous experiences, so I knew that my options were either to hide in my room for four years or to do something to make myself less scared.
The captain of the Judo club told me later that he couldn't believe I'd even signed up, let alone made it to a training session, because I was such a "nervous little mouse".
What I expected to learn was how to defend myself, but what I actually learned was that men could be just as clumsy and unsure of themselves as I was - in short, I learned that they were mostly not anything like the big hairy, sweaty monsters I'd encountered in the past, but actually fellow human beings.