Choices & Consequences

18 Apr, 2024

Ever met someone who gets everything they want out of life? You are looking for a job or that new project, and you spend countless hours ensuring you get that job or project, only to find that your friend with half your effort got a better job or a better deal in the end.

Almost all of us have met people who we call lucky. They get the best out of all the situations and we don’t. It’s always us vs them.

I am getting into a topic that most people agree with when it reflects on someone else but disagree when it reflects on them — Choices.

We are a product of our choices. There is no such thing as a good choice or a bad choice. We label them with good and bad based on the desired outcome. The choice of never going to college isn’t a bad choice. We call it a bad choice because of what happens if you don’t go to college and get a basic education. The best and worst case outcomes determine the label of good vs bad choice.

All choices can potentially be a bad choice or a good one depending on the outcome. You go to rob a bank and land a job as a security consultant through a random turn of events. You wouldn’t regret that decision as much as you would if you were caught and sentenced.

All our choices lead to some consequence. Some are smaller, some are of higher magnitude. Even when we try our best and fail it’s still our choice. We deserve whatever happens as a consequence. This leads to a dark truth about life and us.

We deserve whatever happens to us.

A lot of you are going to disagree when I say the above statement so I will explain what I mean. We deserve whatever happens to us but we aren’t responsible for it. When you hear the word “deserve” you instantly think about your fault in it. That it’s your fault because you deliberately made that choice.

Sometimes we make terrible choices that could have been controlled like not going to college. Whatever happens in our life because of lack of education, we deserve it. You could pursue some alternate education and become a self-made millionaire or you could live the rest of your life as a homeless bum.

But what if you are walking on the street, some drunk driver hits you from behind and you are paralyzed for life? You’d be right to assume that you cannot possibly deserve this.

As I said, you are not responsible for that drunk driver’s actions. Here’s the definition of what I mean -

You deserve the results of your actions. You deserve the consequences of your choices. You didn’t plan for this outcome but you made the choice and in that choice, the risk of worse was there.

The driver too will have to live out the rest of his life with the consequences of his actions. It could be guilt or a long sentence as punishment.

Here’s another tough pill to swallow. Not everyone gets what they deserve. Some people hurt others so badly, give them trauma for life, and still walk away scot-free without any consequences.

Such incidents alone are enough to tell you that there’s nothing called good or bad. Good deeds don’t result in good results. It is a possible and most likely outcome but isn’t mandatory.

Every time you make a decision in your life, there is a probability of ruin and you have to accept it. You walk on the road and a drunk driver can hit you but what’s the probability of that happening? How can you nullify that probability?

You walk on the side streets without your headphones on so you can hear unusual sounds from far away. Now, you have reduced the probability of the worst-case scenario to an extreme minimum.

If you never have to face any road accidents, congratulations, you deserve the consequence of this action.

The single takeaway from this essay is this — you are not responsible for everything that happens to you but you deserve the consequences of every action you took.

Good doesn’t guarantee good, bad doesn’t guarantee bad. This is a fantasy of religion, not a practical life.

But then what is the law of causality? Why do bad people end up in bad situations? Why they cannot escape if there are no good or bad choices?

That’s a topic for another essay.