What causes misunderstandings amidst My Children? Usually, simply that – misunderstandings. There are many roads to understanding as well as many roads to misunderstanding. Both appear as free handouts any day of the week.

One partner may say: “Sell the business.”

The other may say: “Expand the business.”

This isn’t really a misunderstanding. It’s a disagreement.

How can two people come to a common decision and each stand firmly in his or her truth?

Can there be a democratic decision, or is too much being asked of you or anyone to decide?

Which restaurant to eat in today can be conceded. Heart and soul are not at stake.

Now, here is the crux. Where do two partners go from here? Is one response true and another untrue? When a decision has to be made based on two disparate points of view, what will you do then? What if two responses cannot be unified? Where does agreement lie if it lies anywhere at all?

In theory, everyone’s commitment is honored. In actual life, when there are two different truths, how can both be honored?

If this is a case of marriage, it can be said that one of the couple makes his or her decision, and the other’s decision may well fall by the wayside.

Marriages break up. Business partners part. I imagine no one is exactly dancing for joy. There was a time when a vow between a husband and wife was inviolate regardless of the heart of the matter. There was and may still be times when an outside observer casts the decision and no one is happy, well, perhaps except for the seeming dispassionate judge whose decision is done.

There are hearts left broken. There are decisions that simply do not give happiness any way you slice it.

How many right decisions are there, and who decides them? We can also ask: Does anyone truly personally decide? Years later might a seeming decider have chosen otherwise or not? Was there ever a truly personally made choice?

Are there decisions that are already cast long before the time comes?

Do people mess up their own lives, or is it true that the die is cast long before the people concerned had any idea? Is the die cast not a decision, but inevitable?

When someone decides to go left or right, is this a true decision or more of an inkling?

Sometimes it may seem that unhappiness comes whatever the decision, and there really doesn’t seem to be a good arrangement to be made. Is it possible to make a decision bearing on others’ lives that does not matter keenly?

How far can a human heart go in decisions that the mind makes? Sometimes it doesn’t seem possible that there can be peace, liberty, and happiness for all.

There may also be unspoken contracts by the dozens. Unspoken commitments and hearts laid bare.

You could be the finest, most loving person in the world, and no matter which way you go, you leave a trail of broken hearts along the way, including your own.

Yet how can you always make decisions that spare anyone’s pain, let alone everyone’s?

Is doing what is called the right thing always or ever the right thing to do? On what basis does any human being faced with making a hard decision decide it? There may not be one precise turn in the road to take. In the world, one result seems to be a consequence of many turns at the time and no clear turn if ever to choose from. There just may not be a flowered path out there. Blindfolded, you make a choice. Even when you don’t make a conscious choice, then in not making a choice, a choice is being made no matter how chancy it may be.