Hard Decisions

Hard decisions are hard to make. Thus the word, right?

If that doesn't make sense, don't think too much into it. It simply means what it says. And I'm willing to bet, that if you've gone through it, you'll agree.

I just had a nice long conversation with an old friend. We hadn't met in a while, and he updated me on some of the stuff that's been happening in his life. It involved, as you can guess, a few hard decisions. He has probably made a few enemies, or at least hurt a few people this way. I think that's unavoidable. No real hard decision is made without such an outcome. Heck, choosing what to do for a living might even be easier; at least that way its just yourself getting hurt.

In some ways though, it gets harder the more you know God. There's all this talk about love, turning the cheek, giving another chance; etc etc. How does that affect the decision making process for us? It makes me wonder. Sometimes the only way to cure a cancer is to cut it out. Lose that bit of poison that's seeping into you, before you lose something even more important. Will you lose something important? Perhaps, but by doing so you protect that which is essential, and ultimately more important.

In my job, this just gets clearer each day. You start to hear and sometimes see the sob stories that will one day appear in front of a judge. Oh I didn't know it would be so serious, I'm so sorry, please give me another chance. I didn't mean it that way, I didn't think it would hurt someone that much. It's not me, I was just helping. The list of things people say in their defence start to stagnate after a while. I'm starting to learn that the only time something is worth actually listening, is when its actually true. In all other cases, keeping the law as true as it can be to itself, so that people who live under it are protected, involves hurting a bunch of people along the way... even some whose lives already seem terrible. That's the only way the law can continue to be just.

Thus... hard decisions must be made. Those who would say otherwise, perhaps they haven't been living as true as they should be. Singapore is a great place for that really; all your needs met, your education set, there's no real need to struggle for something. And so when a crisis hits, or crawls up right up to your face, you're lost as to how to react, how to respond. Too often, we sweep it under the carpet and expect life to go on. It rarely does. That piece of dirt is just going to infect you and get exposed one day.

So.. I'm learning. Learning to see the hard decisions in life, and to make them early, before the sun comes down on its day and I'm left to suffer through the cold night of a problem's reckoning. I bet Jesus made a ton of hard decisions, we just don't see it that easily when we read the gospels.

Time to grow up, I suppose.