Considering Choices and Their Consequences
In my research for this blog, I ran across a site, Mental Health Daily, that educates readers about brain development and the ages that we humans normally develop the many mature, cognitive abilities that are required for making good decisions and choices for ourselves. The research shows that our brains grow into maturity at about the age of 25, depending on the individual. Some of us develop can earlier in life and others are late bloomers. Between the ages of 20 and 25, our brains are still developing the capacity to focus our attention on one thing and ignore any distractions, and we are developing our impulse control. We are also growing in the ability to set goals and create complex plans to reach them. Our capacity to make good decisions, think logically, organize our thoughts, make risk assessments, and the ability to consider the possible outcomes of our choices are still developing. Our short-term memory capacity is growing as well, so we are able remember how other decisions affected us in the recent past and we can use that to inform our current ones.
Another interesting fact to consider is that our brains are very, very sensitive organs. They are affected for good or for ill depending on our diets, exercise, stress, socialization, sleep, what we watch on social media and tv, meditation, environmental enrichment, education, cognitive challenges, emotional challenges, stress, drugs, alcohol, and dietary supplements. Phew! That’s quite a list, to be sure. And some of the things on that list we are in control of as we grow into our mental maturity as young adults and some of those things we are not. If our parents made bad choices that harmed us or created a negative environment to grow up in, our brain development can suffer as a result. For instance, an anxiety ridden parent can create an anxiety ridden child. The child is simply not in control of this, yet it affects the brain of the child. So, too, can our own, negative choices as children, young adults and even older adults affect our brain development and function. And, by extension, the quality of our lives can and often does suffer. If we chose to take drugs or drink alcohol as children or young adults, our brain development can tragically be negatively affected – sometimes for an entire lifetime. This is a tough consequence that sadly happens all across the world.
As adults, we all have grown via both nature, nurture, and our experiences into our own, individual levels of capacity to make good or bad choices for ourselves. We each have our strengths and weaknesses in any and all of the above-mentioned, decision-making skillsets of the brain, and they directly affect us via the consequences of our choices. And, as adults, we and we alone are responsible for those consequences. Sometimes, this is a painful reality to accept, and we twist and turn on the truth when we have messed up. Depending on our coping strategies and our ego strength we will make a choice about how to deal with the fact that we disappointed ourselves and often, another person. If we are able to face the truth that we made a mistake that somehow harmed ourselves and/or another, we can then choose to own up to what we did, accept the consequences for our actions, apologize, forgive ourselves, and make amends for what we did wrong. This repairs the situation, and we can learn and grow from it and move forward. The positive outcomes of this choice are - the relationship to the other person, and to ourselves, are salvaged. Our self-worth and ego are strengthened, if a little bruised temporarily, and our reputation is strengthened. If we choose to try to weasel out of responsibility for our mistakes, the exact opposite occurs along with a lot of resentment from the other person to boot. We also don’t feel good about ourselves, even if we try to ignore that niggling conscience whispering in our ears to do better. Nothing is resolved and we have taken ourselves down a peg in our own eyes and in the eyes of those around us. So, we chose a different set of consequences for our actions and that has very negatively affected us in the long run.
On a societal level, there is a very corrosive issue in the culture of the United States about not taking personal responsibility for the consequences for our own actions. And one which has eroded the Truth down to a sad reflection of its former self via liability lawsuits, opportunism, and the personal greed of lawyers and their clients. Our legal system is completely bogged down by the weight of the numbers of liability lawsuits on the dockets of our courts. A judge’s calendar stretches out into years of impending lawsuits that common sense should have prevented and that arbitration could not resolve. Our tax payer dollars are burdened by the volume of cases being deliberated every day, often by people who want to defer responsibility for their own actions onto someone else and make money off it, too. There are, of course, legitimate lawsuits out there, but ever since the mid 1960’s (yeah, I‘m that old) and the lies and corruption from our leading politicians aired on live TV, our personal responsibility became the other person’s liability and the Truth, well, that got sliced to legal ribbons.
So, it boils down to you, to me and to our society as a whole and our individual and collective integrity. It’s up to the choices we make and accepting the ensuing consequences for our actions. The Merriam Webster Online Dictionary defines Integrity as 1: a firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: Incorruptibility 2: an unimpaired condition: Soundness 3: the quality or state of being complete or undivided: Completeness We have had so many bad examples in the media these days of nonexistent integrity in our leadership and in our media, but that does not mean that we have to behave like them. We can reject their reprehensible behavior and call them to account for themselves. We can stop making excuses for their corrosive behaviors that we and our kids are watching. We also have the power to demand better from them. We also have power over our own choices and their consequences that we make for ourselves and for those our choices affect. I would ask you to consider who you want to be and how you want to feel about yourself in the world. How do you want to be known and what really matters to you. These are but a few choices for you to make, and consequences will happen to you and to others as a result of how you choose. There’s a lot of places to go really wrong or go really right in life depending on what you, I or we collectively decide. The sooner we all are able to make positive decisions for our individual and mutual highest goods, the highest good of our society, and, ultimately, of the world, the better our lives will be. It is simply up to all of us to make positive choices from which we can all live happily with the consequences.
It always has been.
Namaste,
Jean 🌱
