Sherlock Holmes once said: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” You may have heard this quote from Spock, who further popularized it. Either way, I know little to nothing about detective work or space-ship operation, but both figures were extremely intelligent men, so I trust those words rang true in their respective fields. However, in my less glamorous occupation of being a regular person navigating regular-people life, I too have found this quote incredibly apt, particularly when making decisions.
As reasoning beings, endowed with top-of-the-line brains, we should make the most of our deductive faculties. Consulting the objective, logical part of ourselves when faced with a decision is generally not a bad idea if you’re trying to keep the future you on civil terms with the present you. However, sometimes the mental pros and cons chart, often employed for the task of rational decision making, leaves us with an equal number of entries in both the pro and con column. Thankfully, we are also feeling beings, not entirely dependent on passionless mental charts to guide our lives. It is just as ill-advised to make decisions entirely devoid of the input of one’s emotions and “gut” as it is to make decisions devoid of our mind’s input.
Discerning what feels right can be challenging when all the possibilities being considered induce either equally strong positive or negative gut-reactions. This is wehre the wise words of Holmes become relevant. Instead of trying to imagine your future down any of the potential paths that lie before you and making comparisons accordingly, envision your life in the absence of each of the realities you are struggling to decide between: if the thought of not taking a particular course of action seems so loathsome as to be practically impossible, take it as a sign to decide in favor of that path. Perhaps, when making a mental pros and cons chart, the difficulty in recognizing that particular choice — the one which is unbearable not to pursue — as the only possible outcome to your decision, lay in the fact that it seems so improbable to carry out. Perhaps, even when trying to asses how you felt about that only possible possibility, it’s improbability made you shy away from it and cause your stomach to churn. However, once you’ve realized that not deciding to pursue that path is the only really positive decision you can make, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
This may sound like overly idealistic advice that does not, in fact, handle improbabilities or practicalities very well. But, as an indecisive person myself, this tactic has yet to fail me. I’ve made decisions that went against the advice of authorities and, in choosing those paths, seen the long stretch of labor that lay ahead of me as a consequence, and which might have come to nothing. But, I knew a future in which I did not at least attempt the improbable but necessary, and that future was insupportable and impossible to me. And, after all, what is there to lose by failing if you’ve already decided on having nothing, by deciding not to pursue the only outcome that mattered? But — as far as the track-record goes — I haven’t regretted any of my Holmesian decisions to date, and many are some of the best decisions I’ve made.