Gun’s Quote-of-the-Week:
“S**t or get off the pot!”
-American Proverb
I have come to observe two major things over the course of
the summer. First, that there is a plethora of information that is out there,
all formed from the collective research and discovery of billions of humans all
over the world who are channeling that information in to one, singular
repository; the internet. The second is that we, as individuals, have no idea
how to handle that much information.
This has led me to discover a third; we are more indecisive
than ever.
Take Syria ,
for example. We think they used chemical weapons. Other nations haven’t come to
the same conclusion based upon their observations. Some nations think their use
is justified. Others don’t. Some say that thousands of Civilians died. Others
think the targets were justified. Everybody thinks everybody else’s perspective
is lunacy.
Nothing has changed the fact that there is a terrible war
going on in the Middle East and that people
are dying, starving and being displaced. Nobody is doing anything about that,
because everybody wants to get their facts straight and, of course, make their
friends agree with them first. Nobody can make a decision until everybody else
agrees with them. God forbid going at it alone, even if the one person alone is
the one who’s right.
I get a trade journal once a month. I have all my notes and
textbooks from college. I work with building engineers and maintenance personnel,
owners, architects and bean-counters who all have varying interests in a
construction project… and that’s just one job. At any time, I have 4-6 on my
desk. If I can’t make a decision about them quickly, and on a certain schedule,
I make people mad, bump schedules, miss deadlines or simply look dumb. All of
this ultimately results in losing money.
…and that’s just the office.
At some point in time, we have to acknowledge that no matter
what we will never have all the answers. You will never know everything that
there is to know about what school to send your kid to. You will never know
everything there is to know about what car you should buy. The same could be
said for your house, your church, hell, even the person you are going to marry.
(Oh wait… first you should decide who to date…)
One of our biggest problems right now is that we know we
have all of this information in front of us, yet knowing this, we actually
second-guess our lives and the decisions we make inside of them because the
facts we used to make our choices in the first place now change daily. In a
way, it was easier to live and make choices before computers, cell phones, the
internet or even easily-accessible libraries and universities. When you only
have one or two sources of information, it takes very little to reach a
conclusion.
This isn’t saying that you should look before you leap, fly
by the seat of your pants or otherwise refuse to plan. (Unless you are that
kind of a person in which case this Gun’s Quote is meaningless to you anyway)
What it does say is that you still have to choose even when you know full and
well that you will not know everything there is to know behind that decision.
That requires faith. Faith that the time you spent and the efforts that you
make are enough to make a decision with enough confidence to know at the time
it was made the best decision was chosen.
Finally, if there is any one thing I have learned this
summer, it is that you will always be wrong. Even if you did bury yourself in
research, fact-finding and perhaps even meditation, you still will not acquire
enough information to fool-proof yourself. You make errors. You make bad
choices. Sometimes your discretion is a little off. That’s because you are a
human and imperfect. Stop trying to be perfect. It doesn’t work and it will
make you miserable.
Take your dump and leave. The world doesn’t revolve around
you, which means it won’t wait on your choices, either. Do your due-diligence,
evaluate, pick and do it.
…and that’s why it’s a Gun’s Quote!
