Decide without owning the decision

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner: Sir, I want to ask you about ‘decision making’. Want to ask, more precisely about procrastination, about postponing things. What if you don’t have time to postpone something and if it has to be chosen immediately, is there a possibility of choosing the wrong way or is every way the right way, which leads to the same?

Acharya Prashant: Then you have been brought to a point if it has to be chosen right now.

Listener 1: If you have to make the decision?

AP: Then it has to be a random decision.

L1: It leads to the same?

AP: It is equally bad, this way or that way. So toss a coin.

L1: Is it equally bad? That’s the thing.

AP: You know, if you take any side, then you are asserting that you know something. It is better to just acknowledge that you don’t know. Or, if it is so very urgent, then if you want to back your knowledge, back it. But you should remain firm in the acknowledgement that it is just a blind throw or toss of the coin.

If you know that it is a blind toss of the coin, then you will not face the consequence of the action. When the results will come, then you will know that these were inevitable and you won’t face suffering.

L2: If someone is not being able to respond without getting obsessed with the decision, destroying their energy, is it better to make a wrong decision than no decision? Then come what may, but at least you decide it and get into interaction, rather than just not moving.

AP: When we say, “Leave it to life,” that only means that now you are not applying your own discretion. When you do this honestly, then at least later on, you will not say that my decision went bad. If your decision goes bad, then you will bear the suffering. Do you understand?

L2: As they say, Ram’s decision.

AP: Just say, “Oh, Ram does not know anything, so Ram is now deciding blindly. Of course, it’s a contingency that Ram must decide, so Ram is now just randomly choosing something. Then the results come. First of all, you already know that it was a blind guess.