Where the Choice Begins
You think you choose—
this path, that coin,
this answer dressed as reason.
But before the hand moves,
before the mind speaks,
there is a trembling—
a quiet flame
no logic can name.
They silenced the heart
and asked for a decision.
Silence answered.
Not wisdom—
but absence.
For what is choice
without the wind that bends it?
What is reason
without the fire that gives it shape?
You are not the scale
weighing the world.
You are the pulse
that makes the scale tremble.
Do not be ashamed
of the error,
of the step that falters—
it is in the stumble
that the soul remembers
it is alive.
And if there is a hidden garden
where truth resides,
it is not in the sharp edge of knowing,
but in the soft space
between doubt and desire—
where something within you
leans
before you even know
why.
Some time ago, I read a most compelling research paper on the role of emotions in decision-making, in which an experiment was conducted to determine the extent of emotional influence. A group of individuals was asked to make a series of decisions that could be classified as purely rational—such as choosing between a bag filled with coins or a bank transfer of substantial value.
Those within the control group were able to make these decisions without difficulty, and generally arrived at similar conclusions. The experimental group, however, had a region of the brain associated with emotional processing inhibited; and despite prior observations regarding the importance of this area, the researchers were astonished to discover that none of the participants was even capable of making a decision at all.
We are, I believe, not merely the act of choosing, but the very impulse to choose—and, as with all impulses, it is emotion alone that guides the hand. We are more flesh, hormone, transmitter, and noise than we are a calculating machine.
Can we even select the reasonable option when the impulse runs counter to it? Is our capacity to choose wrongly, despite what is evident, a sign of our humanity?
I do not believe in a god; yet, if one were to exist, it would not dwell at the boundaries of knowledge, but rather within the empty spaces of our perception.