Choices

Relationships. They pretty much rule our life. In our work life, we depend on the relationships we have and share with our co-workers regardless of whether they work above, below or alongside you. In our personal life, we pretty much depend on relationships to help us define who we are. All in all, our success in all spheres of life depends on our success at handling the relationships which characterize that sphere.

         Our lives are like empty storyboards and we depend on other people to help us fill these out through our encounters and dealings with them. Over a period of time, people who have sizeable presence in these story boards become the significant people in our lives. These people need not be the ones we love or even like for that matter. All it takes for a person to be significant in our life is for them to have be involved with our life in a more than average manner. These significant relationships are the founding pillars of our demeanour over the short term and their cumulative effect contributes to, or rather essentially creates our personality.

         Many times we do not get to choose the people who constitute such relationships. The people constituting the family sphere are chosen mostly before you were born. Colleagues are thrust upon you with little regard to your say in who should be. Friends are often found through serendipity and enemies are born of eventuality and sometimes accidents. All in all we have little or no say in choosing the people we are related to regardless of whether it’s our professional, personal or social life. However there is one person in everyone’s life that they do get to choose. This person happens to be the one person who will influence all spheres of life. The Spouse.

         Everyone grows up knowing that that is one choice that is completely yours to make. You never have to listen to anybody else’s opinions or influences and nor should you. It is very important to choose the right person who is going to be your better half. We encounter thousands of people in our daily lives and if we were to spend a majority of our time with one person out of these thousands, that person better be the best choice.But here’s the crux of this whole issue.Do we really have a choice?

         Regardless of cultures, habits and lifestyles, this one significant person becomes your other (hopefully better) half for once we have chosen, we’re never truly just ourselves. We’re constantly in each other’s presence be it through their physical presence (as is the case with a few lucky people) or through their influence on our thoughts, behaviours, personality or the reaction of other people in your life and the effect this relationship will have on your relationships with those people.

         So, when it comes down to choosing a spouse, we need them to be ours. But if we were to break down that ‘ours’, we realize that that s at the end of that ‘ours’ is almost perfectly a pun. It not only stands to imply belonging in a grammatically correct manner and also to imply the multiple dimensions that constitute someone being ours. A few of the 'our's they need to be include (but are not limited to) them being (in no order of priority)

• Our Soul-mate
• Our parents and siblings' in-law
• Our family’s member
• Our friends’ friend
• Our children’s parent

         Some people out there might argue that it is not important for all these to be satisfied or that one of these is supremely important to the point of needing to be oblivious to the others. Others might talk about an order of priority where the ones at the bottom could be left out. But if you were to ever look back upon the failed relationships you’re familiar with, regardless of whether you were a part of them or not, you’ll realize that the reason for the failure essentially boils down to one of the partner failing to be one of these. Any relationship where any of the two people involved do not qualify to be any of these could at best be a compromise and at worst, a broken family.

         Given the multifaceted compatibility issue we require from our spouse, it really makes one wonder if there really is such a person in the world. People say it is difficult to find someone for them but try looking for ‘the one’ and then see what difficulty is. Perfection as a goal entails an endless chase and we constantly have to choose between people who qualify to be different combinations of roles from the laundry list. I guess this is the reason why people say relationships are about compromise. It is not the essential nature of relationships to be compromises but the lack of perfect partner leads to necessitating most relationships to be compromises to exist in the first place. Most often, the only choice we have is to decide what we want to compromise on.

         Sometimes, it is a choice between having a person who fulfils a few of these roles and waiting in hope of someone who will fulfil all. At other times, we choose one combination over the other depending on how we prioritize one aspect of our life over the other. However, the underlying fact of it all is that hardly anyone (if not no one) can be everything we want them to be.

         Choice is the quintessential delusion of the human mind which leads to one believing in the existence of an abundance of good things in life. It gives hope of better things and makes us decide to keep looking for perfection where none exists. However it is important for one to realize that more often than not, choice results from having to pick the lesser of the two compromises. At the risk of sounding cynical, most people never have the option of choosing what makes them completely happy out of the rest. They are never in a position to choose perfection out of the rest. Most often, people are in a position where they have to choose the better of two seemingly adequate options. And that distinction is most often not easily made!!