I’ve heard that the average human makes 35,000 decisions in one day.  For me and my fellow libras, I speculate that the number gets reduced to 20,000.  You can’t ask me what my favorite color is without me debating the pros and cons of purple and blue in my head, while my eyes squint, and you assume that I got distracted. Nope! Just trying to make one. friggin. decision.  Sapphire? Violet?  Impossible!  Don’t make me pick an outfit, or we will be here all night.

This was definitely my favorite dance costume that I was wearing at the time, as you can tell by my “I’m not normal” face.

Regardless of how many decisions we are making, or not making, I always wonder who or what is making them.  Of the 35,000, some are conscious choices.  Time to eat breakfast!  And a significant chunk are subconscious.   Picking up my phone to scroll instagram for the 11,114th time.  Turning the coffee machine on in the morning.  Driving somewhere without really remembering the turns.  Sure, we are kind of used to those decisions.  And we already know that our subconscious is basically a biological supercomputer. 

Going one step further: what are the inputs for that supercomputer?  If our brain is the original large language model, then what on Venus’s green earth are the inputs?  What data was fed into our brain computers that produced the weird dreams, the trigger responses, and our most lofty aspirations?

As usual, I have no answers.  I’m an artist, not a scientist.  But I have a hypothesis:  our environment plays an outsized role in who we are and how we react. Some people can overcome their environment in different ways than others.  But everyone is influenced by the people and the institutions around them in some way and to some degree.  It’s evolutionary - it keeps us safe by keeping us with the tribe.

My hypothesis alone reveals a lot about me and how easily influenced I am by my environment and the people around me.  It’s been a lifelong getting to know myself on that front.  But because I do it myself, I see it in others, and sometimes when others don’t. 

This week, I experienced the phenomenon of outside influences up close.  An organization makes a policy based on their past experiences, their present role and their future expectations.  A person in charge communicates that policy, based on their past, present and future.  The person affected by the policy (it’s me, hi), reacts based on their past, present and future (sorry).  The original policy idea is in there somewhere, burdened by all the inputs of all three pasts, presents, and futures.  And sussing out which is which and what really matters can be…almost impossible, kind of like this Venn diagram here. 

“Symmetrical 5-set Venn diagram” by Cmglee - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Photograph: Wikimedia Commons

So at the end of the day, I might implement 35,000 decisions, but who or what is informing them, and are those the inputs I want to inform these decisions?  Since I’m not conscious of most of those decisions, it’s really important that I understand where in the Carmen Sandiego these ideas came from.  Is Chachi in charge?  Sometimes it feels like it.  Even when our subconscious ideas are akin to an unbelievable plot in an 80s sitcom, we have to look at those ideas straight on. It’s not lost on me that we need to look that metaphorical shark, straight in the eye, in order to jump it.

But that’s what we can do.  We try to find the sharks, the Chachis, the waterskiing, all of the inputs living inside us.  We talk, we move, we ignore, we feed all of those crazy inputs at different times.  These little shadow characters are so multifaceted, so rich.   On this fine Friday morning, I can’t help but promise to keep my eyes wide open, and to stay curious about all the people and places around us, and about whatever the F*&# is going on inside.  Tell me about yours?

Always,

Lauren

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