Decisions and Elephants

There are some decisions, even important ones, that are easy to make.   In fact, most of the decisions we make are so easy to make that we’re not even aware that we’re making them. Or if we are aware, the choice is so self-evident that we simply know what to do.

I remember reading once about a condition of the brain that rendered it almost impossible to make decisions. As I recall (or as it seems to make sense to me in this moment) the problem that caused this condition was about emotional processing rather than analytic reasoning. While many of us pride ourselves on being reasonable and thoughtful people, it turns out that our unconscious emotions and intuitions are mostly running the show. Our conscious reasoning most often arises after the decision is already made.

One alarming study demonstrated that the conscious intention to move arises a split second after the message to move has already gone to the muscles in question. My decision to get up from my chair is made by some part of me deeper than my conscious awareness. My decision to move comes after the decision itself is already set in motion.

Jonathan Haidt, in his illuminating book, The Righteous Mind, uses the metaphor of an elephant and its rider to describe the mind. The elephant is all the parts (most of them) of our thinking that we are not aware of. The rider, who is ostensibly in charge of the elephant, is our conscious thinking. The rider appears to have some limited power to make small choices about the direction of the elephant, but spends most of his time making up reasons that justify the decisions the elephant has already made. We do not live rational lives. Our lives are shaped and mostly run by our unconscious selective perceptions and unconscious biases. Yikes!

Haidt goes on to say that if you want to convince someone who disagrees with you on an important matter (like who should be our next President), talking to them about reasons and analysis will not be effective. He memorably says: If you want to change someone’s mind, you need to talk to their elephant. You need to speak at the visceral level to the emotions and assumptions that are often below the level of our awareness.

This brings me to considering the decisions that are hardest to make. These are forks in the road that are both important and, in some way, balanced. Not only are we conscious of having to make a decision, but after weighing the options, both possibilities seem to be equally valid. The potential choices all have their pluses and minuses.

Now, sometimes the best solution in this sticky place is neither A nor B, but rather J or K. We often reduce problems to binary choices when, usually there is a whole range of things we have not even considered. Reducing reality to A or B is one way we manage the infinite universe of possibility, but it is also a way we needlessly disturb ourselves and limit our thinking.

But sometimes, either you go or you don’t go. A yes or a no is required. Sometimes there are two choices and both of them feel bad. This is the classic lose/lose situation. Or this is how it appears to the little thinking self.

Adding to the emotional weight of these difficult choices is the perspective we were taught in school that there is one right choice. Most of us have the sense that we need to make the right decision—that there is a right decision. When it is a matter of some importance, a decision that will have repercussions going forward, we want to make sure we get it right.

In the face of all this pressure and the impossibility of making a truly reasonable decision, one wise teacher (Yogi Berra) gave this advice: When you come to a fork in the road, take it. And of course, this is what we all eventually do. After soul searching and considering (which is often important), we simply do something. and the wonderful thing is that whatever we do leads us into our life.

It turns out that there are many answers to the same question, many choices and options that keep appearing and disappearing. We take one step, either skillfully or not skillfully, then we take the next step. Ultimately, life is not simply a moral quandary. Our lives are a woven fabric of small and large choices that offer constant possibility and challenge. We do the best we can and learn as we go.

In the midst of it all, perhaps we can enjoy the view from the top of our elephants and learn a thing or two about working together with them and our own mysterious elephant hearts.