Bad Advisors

I am from India, to be more specific Mumbai. Famously known as a city that never sleeps. I am not exaggerating this , once I was out and about at 3 AM in the morning and the city was bustling with life, laughter and its usual madness. I had chai (tea) at marine drive that morning overlooking the sunrise, while the world behind me was changing at the speed of light (not exaggerating again) . Seriously blink at any Mumbai crossroads and it shuffles the deck for you drawing a new image every time. 

Though we move at the speed of light (almost) in Mumbai we don’t experience time dilation. Time doesn’t slow down, on the contrary theory of relativity does not apply at all. Lengths keep increasing in the direction of destination and with increasing velocity. And we just keep running!!! This was one of the major setbacks or shocks I had when I moved to the US. My body realized we have to complete 10000 steps in a day, not in the first hour of waking up, like we do in Mumbai Wow!!! But this blog is not to talk about how different life was in Mumbai or what are the issues in the US blah blah. In all this commotion called Life we miss to notice one important underlying aspect which governs when and where we land up - “Our Decisions” 

I am sure the majority of the people are steadfast and rational in their life choices, let's say 90% of the world population does so. I am not, I fall in the other 10% who leap at the whim of an ache. And if you are one of those then read along, others might find this article preposterous and unrelatable and you can stop right here buddy. 

I want to debate, are “Emotions Bad Advisors” ? The majority if not all decisions of my life have been fueled by emotions I felt at the very moment. For instance I felt lonely after all my friends left from the company I was working at and hence I decided to find a job in a new state altogether. And how did I decide which state, easy from my past memory of vacationing there yaay !!! No research , no discussion, just jump the gun. I know you all might feel it's an outright stupid decision but that is what it looks like to ride the wave of emotion. I even decided to leave India for higher studies in a fit of anger not a planned calculated risk but a clean jump into a pool of “I don’t know will reap the repercussions later “ 

I always thought most of my decisions have turned out to be pretty good and in my favor and some nasty ones with really bad consequences. Now how does Mumbai and the US fit into this equation right? It does very well actually. In a country that overstimulates all our senses we hardly have the time to understand what drives our decisions, is it our emotions on overdrive or our rational brain seeking a calmer place to live or the past trying to mend the unhealed. The US gave me the opportunity I never knew I needed. Latitude to analyze my decisions and their underlying emotions. Upon retrospecting I have come to the realization that all my decisions were a ruse to escape reality, even the ones that worked out for me in the end. Mounting to my pile of unresolved issues. Emotional decisions pacified the present and my brain rationalized it by saying “ you wouldn’t have done it otherwise”. Maybe I would have , if I let my body experience it first and make the decision later. Very analogous to love bombing, over stimulate then ghost. I feel this kind of living does have a long term effect on our personality and life, for instance we react instead of respond, we attach instead of embrace, feel threatened by choices for which we cannot provide cerebral explanations and we internalize a hell lot of things. 

 Now that brings me to the most important question: does that make all emotions "bad advisors” . If loving someone requires a rational reason, then I really wonder if we call it love or is it a calculated risk hedging. If showing up for your friend in a dire situation is not a knee jerk reaction then can we call ourselves humans anymore? Or am I an emotional fool, living in a reinforcement learning simulation ? Where do we draw the line between living on the edge and nose diving into life? 

Maybe in today’s day and age of constant manipulation where every step is measured, optimized, and dissected, “Emotions” are bad advisors. Stakes are higher and consequences far beyond than we can bear. We are judged on our successes not the paths taken, giving everyone free access to build and climb ladders of broken promises and betrayals. In an era where love is decided with a left or right swipe, and friendships are erased with a tap after a single disagreement, we’ve learned to call this chaos “life”. Just like in Mumbai where we are heading at the speed of light, convincing ourselves that this blur of moments is what it means to truly live; chasing, scrolling, replacing but never stopping long enough to feel the weight of anything real.

I guess I got it all wrong then , emotions were dead long ago , I should have debated if “Numbness” was a Bad Advisor.