We’re confronted with choices every day: “What should I have for breakfast?” “Do I really want to go to exercises class?” Should I have that second brownie now or save it for later?”
As much as we might groan about them, those kinds of decisions are relatively easy to make because there’s not too much at stake if we opt for one over the other. It’s the really tough ones—the life-changing ones—that lie at the heart of my just-released novel, The Price of Compassion.
Tom Justice, the protagonist, is a young surgeon arrested for murder. How in the heck did he end up in that predicament? After telling his story, I counted more than two dozen critical decisions Tom makes over roughly two decades that change the trajectory of his life forever. His first occurs when he’s only ten years old and is faced with the Herculean task of saving his older cousin from drowning. And those choices grow more complex over time, influencing Tom’s schooling, career, and even the women he loves. I won’t divulge the most controversial decision of all, the one that lands Tom in jail, but I will say this: by the end of the story you may very well be asking yourself, “If I were in Tom’s shoes, what would I have done?”
The fact is, at various points we are all faced with making choices that will have an enormous impact on our lives. Maybe it’s which college to attend, which career path to follow, or which job offer to accept.
courtesy of geniuxworld.com
It could be deciding whether the person who has just proposed to you is really the right person to spend your life with. For my husband and me, it was deciding to adopt children once I found out I couldn’t have my own.
Such life-altering decisions are often extremely difficult to make, but in a TED talk a few years ago, Rutgers philosophy professor Ruth Chang suggested that we shouldn’t fear making truly hard choices. Instead we should consider them an opportunity to look deep within ourselves to see who we really are. In other words, if we’re faced with options that are “on par” with each other, i.e. they each have quantifiable pros and cons that balance each other out, we can then look to the intangible aspects of each choice. Which option speaks more to our core values? Which option, in the end, will leave us with few or no regrets about “doing the right thing”? You can view Dr. Chang’s talk here.
It’s nice to think that once we’ve made those tough choices, life would be hunky dory. But that isn’t always the case. Even when things work out in the long run, the short run can still be challenging. (Raising our sons was the best decision we ever made, but that doesn’t mean it’s been a walk in the park!).
All we can do is move forward, as Tom does, and come to terms with the direction we’ve chosen. I hope no one ever has to face what “Dr. Tom” faces in The Price of Compassion. He has to dig deep for answers and it’s a painful process, indeed.
What’s the toughest decision you ever had to make? Do you harbor any regrets about it? I’d love to hear your take on making hard choices.
