1On Decisions
What Alice Lost
“How am I supposed to make a decision if I can’t pray on it?”
I’d just met Alice when she asked me, with sparkling, teary eyes and a laugh, “How do you make decisions if you can’t pray on it?” She was my host at a four-day college festival on “doubt” and we hit it off on the drive from the airport. It was no idle question. She was agonizing over staying with a man she loved, a sculptor, who didn’t want children, though she really did. She had left the church, she said, and no longer believed the universe had an ear for words and wishes.
Coil curls, classic features, hearty sighs, and those bright, sad eyes. She was crazy in love, thrilled by the man and his work, and oddly sure of his future success. What to do? It may seem obvious that if your partner doesn’t want babies, yet your heart throbs at the sight of swaddle and it’s getting late in fertility’s day, you’d best move on. But such logic ignores the awful, awesome specificity of love. She loved him.
Until she was in college Alice had “prayed on” every decision she made, laying out the puzzle of contrasting loyalties between feuding friends, or arguments for and against taking the last donut. In the car that first day she assured me her praying wasn’t about obvious answers, which she illustrated, in a God voice, saying, “Change your major.” I borrowed her baritone to add, “The future’s in tech.”
That’s when she almost killed us, turning to give me a little push on the arm and swerving a tick into oncoming traffic. Correcting, and back to her usual octave, Alice said, “I miss getting told, ‘Go pray on it.’” In the world of her childhood, “Go pray on it” was part of any advice given or received. She could hear that phrase echo in her mother’s voice, her favorite teacher’s, her baby brother’s, or anyone close to her. Over the few days of the festival, I mulled over what Alice had lost. Whatever else, she had lost a dedicated time for introspection, empty-seeming time safeguarded from and by outside authority, by school, by chums, by mother.
When Alice drove me back to the airport, I asked if she had heard of the century-old Spanish poem “Traveler, There Is No Road,” by Antonio Machado. “Caminante, no hay camino.” She said the title rang a bell. I suggested that when she had an impulse to pray on a decision, she might turn instead to the poem. Find a quiet space and sit with it awhile.
Perhaps that poem came to my mind because we were on the road, but it also seemed apt for the task of soothing worry. My idea was mostly a strategy to regain her time alone, to give a nonproductive moment an aura of legitimacy. But the poem came to mean much more.
Years after we first met, Alice came to say hello at an event. Looking at me with the same affecting eyes, she said, “Caminante, no hay camino,” and I knew who she was in an instant. The sculptor had warmed to the idea of babies; he’s a doting father to their two girls. And she was right about his art. Stories of patience don’t all end so sweetly, but I’d bet nearly all sweet stories require some patience. She said that the poem gave her a way to check in with herself. She added that knowing she had something to sit down with again, in another dedicated moment, helped keep her from stressing nonstop. Her religious tradition of a brief written prayer followed by a period of loosely focused thought made the poem ritual a good fit for her.
How Religion Helps
Not all religions offer “petitionary prayer,” that is, an opportunity to ask a supernatural force for items, answers, or outcomes. Compared to most gods, the Jesus of much American Christianity stands out as available to listen to his followers anywhere, anytime, and like a friend. Catholics ask Jesus or Mother Mary to speak to God on their behalf. Some branches of Christianity await direct answers from God, and may cite the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, who reported God’s words to him: “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know” (Jer. 33:3). Some Christians believe that such prayer can lead to obstacles divinely removed. Some speak of emptying oneself of thought so that the voice of God can be heard.
Religions that don’t promote petitionary prayer still often supply a ritual for contemplation and may promise that the act of contemplation itself helps one’s fortunes. Buddhism doesn’t have official rituals, but in each country or area rituals have developed. One that has grown in popularity around the world is to tend a Zen garden, a mini sandbox with a tiny rake with which to drag lines and shapes, to make roadways and doze them under.
Hindu puja ceremonies can include placing fruit—perhaps an artful display of ripe mango, banana, and coconut—at the foot of a statue or framed image of a spiritual being. Puja rituals include walking circles around that icon, called pradakshina.
Even without the supernatural parts, such rites allow for contemplation. Those who perform them can feel that they gave their issue its proper space and time.
How Art and Science Help
Brain science speaks in terms of our negotiating the world using two distinct mental systems—one for quick problems and one for hard ones. For small decisions our limbic system wings it on vague associations and half-forgotten assumptions perceived as “gut feelings.” We make these calls all day long, and though our guesses are not much better than chance, the stakes are low. For hard or important problems, we engage our ventromedial prefrontal cortex. It requires a lot of energy. People walk and talk all day, but to solve an equation we tend to veer over to a curb and stop walking—and we won’t bother to work that hard unless it’s pressing.
How do we get ourselves to pull over?
Decision theory in business breaks down the steps of a well-analyzed problem. Naming the obvious can help us get a good look at it, and to check that we aren’t skimping on the hard parts. Decision models today are often versions of the following seven steps:
1. Are you sure you need to make a decision here?
2. What facts do you need? Is it even possible to act now?
3. Isolate and describe the best alternatives.
4. Time to do all the math, and start asking around.
5. Search for details on the risks. Ask advice.
6. Create a plan, get others on board.
7. Consider the process and outcome. What can be improved?
There is room for musing in these models, but when the risks are high, CEOs without an express aversion to prayer might well try that too.
For instance, in 2005 German researchers published a study of Sri Lankan business leaders including Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, and Muslims. When asked anonymously if and when they practiced religion at their secular workplaces, many said that they did, for decisions. Though they had been schooled in multiple management protocols for making choices, and some had even been assigned specific versions by their companies, participants with Buddhist backgrounds set up shrines and practiced reflection and stanza chanting; Hindus conducted puja ceremonies, recited mantras at work, and prayed for clarity; Christians worshipped with crosses and other symbols and celebrated mass at work. Business leaders with Muslim backgrounds spoke of aligning behavior to the principles of Islam.
The study used the term the ultimate, to include references to “God, transcendent reality, or truth.” One participant “admitted” that he turned to the ultimate when faced with critical decisions and added, “Perhaps it is psychotic, but I have done this for the last 30–35 years. I feel it makes me a better man and it helps me to take the right decisions.” Researchers found that results of the decision, good and bad, were often attributed to the quality of the ritual experience. The business leaders said the rituals provided “solace, guidance, and inspiration.”
Your Ritual Draws on Both
Both checklist and shrine can help us take risks and assess the results, but they are each limited. We can do a better job than religion in guiding our attention through rational steps, and a better job than Business 101 at inviting in quiet thoughts and unclear feelings.
We can make a retreat for ourselves by bringing water to a plant and taking a few moments to sit in repose and read a poem.
It may seem like common sense to devote a few moments to thinking about a choice. Languages around the world have idioms for “Sleep on it,” or “Decide in the morning,” which shows we are aware that we require time, and various states of mind, to know what we think. In sports, when you get hurt, someone often says “walk it off.” Also when you get mad. Perhaps we could add “walk it out” for a decision-making ritual where you take a stroll.
Find a way to walk without care, a perambulation around a clutch of trees, perhaps. Walking meditation is a staple of much Buddhism. The Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh speaks of the practice, there called kinh hành, as a way to feel the present, mindfully connecting one’s feet to the earth and moving with kindness through the world.
Religions often accompany ritual with mood-altering words to proclaim aloud, or savor in silence; to chant, sing, or mutter. For the Interfaithless, what can hit the sweet spot of gravitas and pleasure is poetry.
Our Poem
The poem I suggested to Alice, Machado’s “Caminante, no hay camino” (1912), is one of the best-known Spanish poems across the globe.
Traveler, There Is No Road
Traveler, your footprints
are the only road and nothing else;
Traveler, there is no path,
the path is made by walking.
As you walk, you make the road,
and turning to look back
you see a path
that will never be traveled again.
Traveler, there is no path
only a foam trail on the sea.
The poem opens with praise for those who make their own way, by preference or need. The first five lines of the ten-line poem hint at lasting accomplishment in footprints and path forging. Things change when line six taps you on the shoulder to look back and see the record of your efforts. Nada, or not much.
The line “that will never be traveled again” sneaks into the poem the limits we usually hide from. All we leave behind is the froth of a ship’s wake, full of energy, but so brief. The poem ends in that frothing erasure, but the order of claims can matter less in poetry than in prose, which is to say that the poem contains both truths, so we do and we don’t leave footprints.
The word “traveler” appears only capitalized, so it always looks like a proper noun, Traveler. The poem invites us each to feel called by that name. There are travelers with stamped passports, travelers of the heart, travelers in time, and travelers of the mind. What kind of traveler are you? The poet was also perhaps talking to himself. When poets seem to be lecturing, handing down wisdom from on high, they often can be read as addressing themselves—cajoling, convincing, reminding. The poem exemplifies Machado’s spare, moody style and sustained metaphors.
Poetry Lesson: Translation, Repetition
English translations of this poem can retain the hypnotic echo of caminante and camino of the original Spanish, but it’s not always easy. “Wayfarer, There Is No Way,” was once a popular version, but those twin words—“wayfarer” and “way”—are no longer commonly used that way. There is also a temptation to use “road” sometimes and “path” other times, but is it worth losing the hypnotic repetition? Three times the poet says, “Caminante, no hay camino,” and it has a different weight each time. There’s a walking beat to it. The poem calls the listener into being as a walker and doubts the walk until the listener is almost nothing but listening.
Spain has a rich walking culture, including the paseo, meaning a street or plaza designated for strolling, and also meaning the daily evening stroll. Machado was also influenced by French symbolists and by Buddhism. Because the Taoist tao has long been “way” in English—camino in Spanish—it feels poignant to say, “the way is not the way,” though it could mean a range of things. That connection has been noted for some time, but the more recent use of the phrase “no way” to mean “I’m amazed,” “that’s impossible,” and “I refuse” also can add texture—and humor—to a reading of the poem.
The road taker is real, though the road isn’t. Roadster, there’s no road. Walker, there is no walk. Path taker, there’s no path. Goer, there’s no going. Way follower, there’s no way. Why does this move me? A lot of people hear an inner call to service that is out of sync with any outer call from the world so far. Not everything is available to everyone, all the time, so in one way or another, we all may be natural-born skiers in a land without snow. Born singers but there is no song. In such an O. Henry “Gift of the Magi” world, what does it mean to make your plans and decisions?
Machado’s use of repetition here is powerful. In any human endeavor, repetition can be a form of investigation. To examine a case repeatedly, with controlled adjustments, is good science. At the same time, I can think of incantations like the name “Beetlejuice!” whose ignition turns only when you’ve said it three times. Repetition is also important to soothe and to hypnotize, it rocks us to-and-fro.
Machado’s poem works wonders by doubting that our big choices are what they seem—they are not roads on a map, they are a gust of wind on which you ride with just more control than a driven leaf. Caught on the to-and-fro of its rhythm, we are able to loosen up and live with a calm heart while waiting and learning. Also: If there is no road, there is no other road—nothing to miss out on. “Traveler, There Is No Road” can help you escape from the lines on the map altogether and the limitations they place on you.
Copyright © 2023 by Jennifer Michael Hecht