Active or passive in your own life?

In these articles I’ve written on several occasions about decision-making and everything that surrounds it. We’ve talked about how hard it is to decide, why some people find it so difficult, which personality profiles are the most indecisive, how to make a good decision when we’re stuck, and how to learn to stand by our own decisions. This subject matters to me because I believe that knowing how to make decisions and stand by them is crucial for our psychological wellbeing and for our happiness in general.

I believe that when we make decisions we become the active subjects of our own lives. There are many situations in which we can’t control the circumstances: life “imposes” certain experiences on us that come as they come, and we have no choice but to adapt. In those situations we have very little power to decide, or none at all. But it’s also true that, much of the time, we can decide and we can choose. And yet, on many of those occasions when we do have the power to decide, we act as passive subjects of our own existence: we let fate, life, the universe or chance (take your pick) decide for us. We become mere spectators of our own film. This is very common when we face a decision that frightens us: we sit and wait for life to make the decision for us. And so the days go by… and the years. And life.

Mª José is 55 and feels very unhappy. She went through a very difficult divorce years ago and hasn’t been with anyone since. Her relationship with her children is very strained. She doesn’t like her job and admits she has never felt happy, not when she was 30 and not now. Never. “I’ve always waited for something good to happen… but nothing ever happens.” Mª José could change many areas of her life; she could work on improving many of the things around her in order to reach, or at least get closer to, that “something good” she’s been waiting for all her life. Instead, her attitude is to wait for things to change, as if hoping to win the lottery without buying a ticket.

Javier is 47, with a good job, three children and a wife who loves him and looks after him. Even so, Javier lives with a constant sense of dissatisfaction. He can’t find meaning in life. He knows that objectively he has nothing to complain about, that many people would kill for what he has, and yet he isn’t happy. He thinks that if he could go back he’d choose a different way of life. Javier is a good father and a good husband; he does everything he’s supposed to do, but inside he’s wasting away and emotionally drifting away from everything around him. He feels trapped, because his sense of responsibility towards his family makes a radical change in his life impossible, but not making it means feeling terribly empty and miserable. Javier lets the weeks and months go by… waiting for his feelings to change somehow, because he doesn’t feel able to do it any other way.

Carina is 39 and has been with her partner Salva for three years. She wants to be a mother and he doesn’t. She has plans for the future on important matters that are incompatible with his, and neither of them is willing to give way. Carina lets time pass in the hope that Salva will change, or that something will, and in every session she tells me about the same situation, one that drags on year after year without any change. She knows Salva won’t change his mind and neither will she, and she realises it isn’t going to work because, in fact, it isn’t working. But she’s afraid of leaving the relationship, so she lets time go by, waiting for life to decide for her instead of taking responsibility for her own happiness.

Pablo, 37, had strong feelings for Lucía, and she for him. He lived in Belgium and she lived in Spain. She wanted to give it a go, but Pablo didn’t feel up to a long-distance relationship. He wanted to stay friends, but she couldn’t, because she was unable to see him as just a friend, so Lucía cut off contact and got on with her life. That was a year ago, and to this day Pablo checks Lucía’s YouTube channel every day to see whether she’s posted a new video. Every morning he goes in hoping to “see” her and find out something about her. “I think about her, I miss her. She’s someone important to me, she still is.” Pablo has unfinished business here: he hasn’t closed the door because he doesn’t want to, but nor is he willing to commit to a relationship with Lucía, so he stays a spectator behind the screen, quite literally.

Mª José, Javier, Carina and Pablo are very different cases, but they all have something in common: they act as passive subjects of their own existence. To a greater or lesser extent, all of them could change their circumstances, but they choose not to, because they’re driven more by their fears than by the pursuit of their own happiness. The truth is that, more often than we think, pursuing our own happiness can be a real challenge for anyone brave enough to go looking for it.

I know more than one reader will identify with this subject, and probably with one of the situations of our four protagonists. If that’s the case, let it be an invitation to reflect.