I once told a guy named Floyd that if given a choice between being the decision maker on a hard choice or deferring to someone else so that I can live without the burden, that I would choose to be the decision maker. I strangely thought of this after reading a manga of Naruto. Shikamaru nearly quits being a ninja because after a mission almost all of his unit (who consists mainly of his friends) were hospitalized. His father explained to him that if he quits someone else will be put in charge of his friends and the pain will only be worse when they screw up and get his friend’s killed while Shikamaru proverbially sat on the sidelines and differed the choices that resulted in his friends death to someone else. Realizing this Shikamaru decides that he will continue leading regardless of how terrible he feels and most likely will feel in the future and vowing that he will tirelessly work in order to better protect his friends.

I believe that Shikamaru made the best choice that when given a chance to choose between deciding something difficult or differing the choice to another and relying on them to carry that burden, as he did, I would want the burden. Only then will I be able to ensure the best choice is made because the choice is within my power and  if I choose poorly that is because I did not work hard enough to understand, comprehend, etc… the ramifications of my choice. I cannot damn someone else for a choice that I coward away from. I instead have to use my failure as fuel for the fires that will power me to work harder, think more, and to make a wiser decision for future hard choices.

There is an argument to be made for differing a hard decision to someone who could be considered an expert. Considering this I am forced to wonder how one could be an expert on hard decisions because a hard decision is only hard because there is no definitive answer. Either side must have its positives and its negatives and be balanced so that either answer can be defended and berated for its merits and shortcomings. I will get more into hypothetical situations such as these in future posts about hero stories and the ethics behind them, but without specifics I maintain that there could be no such thing as an expert in hard decisions. Their could be someone that has a ideological slant that gives them an advantage when making these sorts of choices such as a situation where a teenage girl has just discovered that she is pregnant and weighing thoughts of abortion. Although an issue as personal as abortion may not be the best example it is suitable in illustrating the point I am trying to make. There are definite pros and cons to both sides for the girl based on a whole multitude of reasons that makes this situation a hard choice. Who is an expert in such a matter? I could consider a pro-life minister an expert because he has had 20+ years of activism, debates, and much thoughts on the ethics of abortion. Surely though because of the ministers ideological slant he would easily answer the hard choice and choose that the girl carry the baby and conversely on the other side an ardent pro-choice activist could just as easily choose to abort. This ideological slant, such as the minister has in the example, is evidence or a reason against differing a hard decision to an ‘expert’. There is the possibility of a person who could be considered an expert on the situation who would be able to judge the situation without any prejudice as to what the best choice is for the girl, but frankly I am not so impractical to believe that such a person exists.

In reiterating my original point, I maintain that if given the choice to have to make a hard decision or not, that I would choose to make the hard decisions. Even with the option of differing to an expert I would not. An expert may be only a resource for aiding me in making the best decision but never as a scapegoat for my cowardice. Now to pick on myself a little I seem to be presupposing that I have the option to make these hard choices, I am not in a position of power such as a president or a supreme court justice who have to make hard decisions that affect numerous lives other than their own. At the root of this issue, if given the option to take on a leadership role fraught with hard decisions I would not decline.

OMG this post has gotten way to out of hand…Meant to be short but instead it turned into some sort of stream of thought.