"Options"

If you’re a coffee-drinker and go to Starbucks or Seattle’s Best to order one, you are presented with a bunch of options to pick from right – non-fat, extra hot, no-whip etc. Or if you’re building a house or buying a car, once you pick the base model, you are offered a wide variety of options, correct? From a business perspective, the seller gives you the option of picking something on your own, so that you feel better about shelling out loads of cash. Placate the buyer’s remorse. Show off to a fellow buyer (or a non-buyer) the options you picked. “We got the rear-view camera on our car”, or “Our Navigation system is integrated with our phone and ipod”, “We chose the upgraded Master-bathroom” etc.

Life on the other hand has really few options on a day to day basis. Most of the time the options are really two – the right and the wrong. Every single decision that matters in life, always has a right and a wrong answer. There might be a huge effort on your part or even on a third-party to make them seem like options. But they're really not. We may not always be equipped to see the implication of our choices. And hindsight is 20/20. But it will bode you well if you more often than not assume that there’s a wrong "option"; an option that needs to be avoided and so assume there’s a right "option"; an option that needs to be picked no matter what.

Some of us spend a lot of time trying to avoid the wrong option. I know someone who will go to about 10 different stores to pick the right shirt. I went to more stores to buy a good Winter Jacket, but for a shirt? I think that’s going a little too far. I test drove 3 different smartphones before I made a decision on buying one, spent weeks doing research. But the effort was to get the features that I am looking for and not to avoid doing the wrong thing

What I am trying to say here is this. Looking back I know I made quite a few wrong decisions. But the reason I made the wrong decision was because I viewed it as an option. The wrong decision was either presented to me as an option or I accepted it as an option. And sometimes, there were people that I trusted, that thought it was the right decision. Looking back, they clearly were the wrong decisions. That is not to say that I am trying to shirk the responsibility for them. Au Contraire, I hold myself completely and absolutely responsible for not seeing things clearly and/or not acting accordingly.

Some things are simple really. To smoke or not to smoke cigarettes. The choice is clear there. Cigarettes are harmful to me and others around me. If a friend of mine comes to me and asks me to punch someone in the nose, I would hold off for a wide range of reasons. But if he says that it’s a matter of our friendship, I’d stop and think a while. And if he says that this someone will do worse to me unless I punch him in the nose, then I would lean towards the punching (sounds exhilarating too).

In Nov of 1999, I remember driving back from work, late one night. It was a Saturday night, I was working on a production release and I had to go to work at midnight. As usual I volunteered for it because I was jaded. I really had no choice too as there were things on the system I worked on the most and I didn’t want anyone else calling me up with questions in the middle of the night. So I finished and was driving back at 3am and was stopped by this cop, half way home. I didn’t realize that I was driving with one headlight, until the cop announced that he’s giving me a ticket for “driving with one headlight”. I couldn’t care less, I was exhausted and half-asleep. Just grabbed the ticket, drove home and forgot all about it. A few years later, in fact years after I bought a new car, I was driving back from blockbuster after returning a DVD. Now with Block Buster you have to keep the DVD till minutes till midnight right, so it was after midnight again, and I was stopped by a cop… again. This guy follows me for almost a mile and he pulls me over after I pulled into my apartment complex. He comes down to my car asks me to “Step out of the vehicle”. At this time for some reason I found it funny. So I start laughing. I stepped out of the vehicle and he asks me to face the car and put my hands on the car. I really couldn’t stop laughing now. I asked him if this was a joke. This guy was good but not amused. He said it was no joke, cuffs me slowly, one hand at a time and walks me back to his cruiser. He sits me in the back seat and gets into the car in the front. Now I had to ask him why. He tells me that he has an arrest warrant for me because of an unpaid ticket from Nov.1999. And this was probably 2002 or 2003. Not even the same millennium right? It took me a few minutes to register that and I say to him that I didn’t even have this car then. But he shows me a record on the computer in the car and there was no arguing then. By this time two other cop cars come by. He walks over and talks to them for what seemed like along time. He comes back and says that he’s supposed to keep me for at least one night in the cooler, but since my record was squeaky clean (apart from the ticket that is) he will let me go, if I promise to pay the fine in 14 days. I was elated. I thank him profusely and tell him that I’ll pay it off first thing the next morning. He walks around, helps me out of the car, uncuffs me and eventually drives away.

Now to digress a little, being hand-cuffed is one of the most vulnerable positions, you can be in. You cannot do anything. You cannot even sit in a car without hurting your head or legs. A small helpless kid can walk up to you and kick you where you're vulnerable. You cannot do anything. You can’t even walk properly, leave alone run. You’re completely helpless. I commend the guy who invented the concept of “hands behind your back”

The reason for this story is this. There was no way that I should have completely forgotten about the ticket. I should have remembered it at least when I had the headlight fixed. It may seem like I am pushing it, but really if you think about it, unless there’s a self-destructive trait in you or some rebelliousness or even let’s-see-what-happens streak in you, you will take care of such things right away. I don’t consider myself a criminal, but there was a ‘right(lawful) or wrong(unlawful)’ choice there and I made the wrong choice. That, by definition, makes me a criminal. Now it’s a totally different issue that the cop decided to let me off. He was being a bigger man there. But the fact remains that there was a clear choice, there.

Now, there is only one way to it. There's only one way to live life right. (a) Build yourself on principles. Rules Engine, really. That’s what you need to be. An extensive rules engine. Build yourself on a book if you will, a set of principles that derive from a set of values and beliefs. Continue to add to it, based on wisdom and experience. Again there’s no way around it. And (b) follow it no matter what. There’s absolutely no default. There’s absolutely no gray area. And pretty much no exceptions. It’s the exceptions that get you really, but that’s for a whole another discussion. If you’re thinking about an exception, you might as well throw away the whole rule book. It’s like the Sun saying “I will rise from the west today because that's the only way to avoid the Eclipse”. NO. STAND your ground; GO THROUGH the eclipse; and SURVIVE it; and BE a BETTER man for it.