Life Is Imperfect – In Gita Verse 16.9 Following such conclusions, the demoniac, who are lost to themselves and who have no intelligence, engage in unbeneficial, horrible works meant to destroy the world.
Krishna is saying the person who is indecisive has no itelligence.
Decisions are always difficult but it is good to be decisive. Sometimes one may even make a wrong decision; then too it is better to be decisive rather than remaining indecisive, because in indecisiveness one disintegrates, one becomes fragments; one has a centre no more. The centre is created through constant decisiveness. Each moment one has to decide. It is not very important what you decide. Krishna’s emphasis is not on what you decide; Krishna’s emphasis is on that you decide.
So start making decisions in small things, in very small things. For example if you have decided that at ten o’clock you will go to sleep, then go to sleep. It is not very important whether you go at ten or eleven, that is not important, but decide that you will be going at ten every night, and suddenly you will feel very good. Or decide that you will get up early in the morning at a fixed hour or you will eat at a certain time…. Just start being decisive in as many things as possible and then you will find more and more decisiveness coming to you. It needs practice, that’s all. You have never practised it; you have always been hanging in a vague way, ambiguous, this or that. One can go on hanging between this and that the whole life.
Ordinarily the problem is created because people make a lot of fuss about the right thing to be decided. That’s why. Because we have been taught to always decide the right thing that creates a problem. It is not always so easy to decide whether this is right or not.
Krishna’s whole approach is: don’t be bothered too much about right and wrong and don’t be bothered about what is better. The whole thing at stake is to be decisive. Try as many things as possible, and then after a few months you will suddenly see that a new kind of centre has arisen in you from where decisions easily flow, they don’t take so long a time. And if a decision takes too much time it is always inadequate, because the right moment, the right situation is already gone. By the time you decide it is no more the moment for it, so you are lagging behind.
For example, somebody says something and you start deciding what to answer. By the time you decide, the man is gone, or whatsoever he said has become already irrelevant; it needs no answer now….
Life is a constant decisiveness. Each moment one has to decide. And sometimes not knowing what is right and what is wrong, sometimes not knowing which is better, one has to decide. One cannot afford not to decide, otherwise one will start disintegrating.
Decisiveness is absolutely necessary. Decisiveness is a very essential quality.
There are many people who are incapable of deciding, who go on thinking. They waste their whole life, in thinking, whether to do this or not to do, to be or not to be.
And they are always hesitating, they can’t act and without action life is futile.
They can’t decide, and without a decision there is no possibility of your growth.
Yes, one should look at all the possible alternatives, but not for too long. It should not become a habit. One should look at all the alternatives and then one should be able to decide.
One should not wait for a perfect decision. Remember, because in life there can never be any perfect decision.
I have heard about a man who was searching for a perfect wife. He died unmarried obviously.
When he was dying somebody asked ‘You travelled all over the world, you searched for a perfect wife. Couldn’t you find a single woman who was perfect?’
He said, ‘Yes, I came across a few, but they were searching for perfect husbands!.’
If one is a perfectionist one is doomed to fail. Perfectionists are indecisive people. Nothing satisfies them, everything falls short. Their ideal is too high. Everything seems to be unsatisfactory.
Decisiveness means knowing that life is imperfect and life is short, knowing that we have limitations yet we have to decide.
Alternatives are limited, we cannot wait forever.
Krishna says once you decide then you go wholeheartedly into it, you risk all. One has to be a gambler, then only something is possible: Growth is possible. A new birth is possible, a new being is possible. Otherwise nothing is possible.
Decisiveness is absolutely necessary.
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