Decision time

How do you make important decisions?

Do you make lists, putting the benefits in one column and the costs in the other? Do you call a dozen of your closest friends to get their opinions, well-considered or otherwise? Do you flip a coin? Do you pray?

I’ve tried all of these methods at one time or another. (OK, maybe not the dozen friends, but at least two or three.) The benefit/cost list idea actually appeals to me most, since I like to think of myself as a rational, methodical thinker.

I like to think of myself that way. Unfortunately, it ain’t so. That system only works for decisive people, which group does not include me. It’s not my fault. As you might remember from a previous story, I put all the blame for my indecisive nature on the time I was born. (See the August 16 blog, if you’re curious.)

Here’s what happens when I try to use the list method. First I put fact #1 in the benefits column. Then I think, hmmm, well, of course, in such-and-such a situation or for this-or-that reason it could actually be a cost, so I move it to the other column. But on the other hand, it could be both, better put it in a third column for “not sure.” After repeating this wishy-washy shuffling of the various other facts, I end up going back to fact #1 (and 2 and 3, etc.) and putting them back in their original column, thus spending most of my decision-making time on this completely unproductive process and just about zilch on actually making a decision. Which is really OK, because I probably wouldn’t be able to stick to a decision if I did make one!

Consulting friends works out a little better – after all, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá told us that we should consult on all matters. (Don’t ask me where he said that, just trust me, he did. Somewhere.) And talking it over with a friend or two often helps, except what I really want my friend to do is make the decision for me and tell me what it is. And at the same time, what I really don’t want my friend to do is make the decision for me and tell me what it is, because I’d never listen anyway.

So scratch that system, at least as the main one.

As for flipping a coin … someone recently suggested a method she’d heard about, where you flip a coin and if you don’t like the answer, pick the other one. Let’s see, do you think that would work for me? Sure. Right. I’d be flipping that coin until it disintegrated.

So now we get to prayer. And very specifically to what I call the Five Steps of Decision Making and what the book calls “Dynamics of Prayer.” The particular book referenced here is “Principles of Bahá'í Administration,” and the specific passage is in the Appendix and is attributed to Shoghi Effendi, guardian of the Bahá'í Faith from 1921-1957, although it’s noted that the attribution has never been authenticated. Personally, I don’t care if it’s authentic or not. It works!

According to the text, Ruth Moffat, an early American Bahá'í, reported that Shoghi Effendi told her the first step to solving any problem is to pray and meditate. Second, “arrive at a decision and hold this” even if it seems “almost impossible of accomplishment.” You asked, you got an answer, don’t quibble, trust it!

Third, “have determination to carry the decision through” and “immediately take the next step.” Fourth, be confident that this is the correct answer and that the reason will become clear. And finally, “ACT … as though it had all been answered ... until you become an unobstructed channel for the Divine Power to flow through you.”

In the 40-plus years since I became a Baha’i, I’ve followed this guidance several times, and have always found it to be effective. Sometimes I’ve experienced a very strong sense of what I should do, and not always what I thought the answer would be. The most explicit example of that happened in October of 1969. At the time I was trying to decide whether to return to Illinois State University the next Fall to continue my undergraduate education, or to stay in the Chicago area and keep working full-time as a secretary.

I picked an evening when neither of my apartment mates were home and tried my best to buckle down and just plain pray, without distraction, and with focus on the question at hand. And I got an answer, loud and clear. Not something I heard, exactly. I don’t know how to describe the sensation. It just seemed to be there, in an almost physical sense. When I tried to deny it as not being logical, I felt like a wall had plunked itself down next to me and was not allowing me to move to any other mental position.

The answer that I felt so strongly was, yes, go back to school, but no, not next Fall. Now. Meaning in January, when the Spring term would start. It didn’t make sense because I had a lease, and to leave the Chicago area and move back downstate in January would involve either finding someone to replace me or paying my apartment mates for the remainder of the lease term. And I really didn’t want to have to deal with either option.

But I’d started this prayer process with the inherent promise to complete it, and completing it meant accepting the answer, etc., so come January I was back on campus. Now here’s the moral of the story: if I hadn’t listened to whatever or whoever was giving me instruction, I wouldn’t have married my husband less than a year later and that means our daughter would not have been born. Due to specific circumstances in his life, and the fact that I came back in January instead of the next September, the two of us became good friends and then engaged. That exact situation would not have existed in September.

Which is not to say I wouldn’t have married eventually, and maybe even to the same man, or that I wouldn’t have had other children, but not this child, this particular combination of genetic traits who has become a particular adult who does so much good for so many people that I really believe she was the reason for the answer that came that evening. Because I also believe that praying for answers, and especially in the systematic way Shoghi Effendi is purported to have explained, gives us access to information beyond what we can acquire with our brains. Someone out there knows stuff about us that we don’t know, and when we pray we open the channels for them to tell us what we need to do for reasons we don’t yet comprehend.

OK, so that was, at least to my mind, a dramatic result of using this Five Step process. However, when I used it last Monday, I didn’t get a resounding “DO THIS” kind of answer. It was more like, yup, you know what to do, don’t deny it, just go for it already. Sort of a warm, soothing sauna rather than a wake-up-or-else cold shower.

And what was I trying to decide? Whether to apply to the master’s program in creative writing. The consulting-with-friends method of decision making also played a big part in this one, because so many of you sent me such wonderful kind and supportive comments on my last blog – on the blog itself, in Facebook, and via email – that the whoever or whatever was listening to my prayer didn’t have to give me much more than a gentle nudge.

Shoghi Effendi, or rather Ruth Moffat’s memory of Shoghi Effendi, doesn’t seem to be guaranteeing that the answer that comes will necessarily be the final answer, but instead that this is the answer you need. “Have faith and confidence that … the right way will appear, the door will open, the right thought, the right message, the right principle or the right book will be given you.” So I don’t know if I’m supposed to go ahead with this application because I really might get accepted, or because applying is a necessary route to some other important place in my life, or because there’s something I need to learn from the process. All I know is I must do it, for whatever reason, and that I must do it with “the determination to carry the decision through.”

So since the book says to immediately take the next step, as soon as my prayer time ended I went straight to the computer and registered for a date to take the dreaded GRE exam.

October 19. 12:30 p.m.

Pray for me. PLEASE!

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