That short and simple Robert Frost poem was the centerpiece of my thoughts . The hypotheticals and what ifs of that Road not Taken, or the road less travelled lingers on my mind. It creates a fork of what action to take and indeed , we cannot trod on two roads . As the old song , we can’t be at two places at the same time. Thus, we have to take just one road .
The dilemma of choice is as old as as Man. It is biblical and also philosophical. Dilemma in its real sense must be between choices. Mostly on the choice between good and evil, between equally strong and heavy choices, between ideas or entity mostly on equal footing. These maybe comes as hard to make choices but in the end, there can only be one.
There are choices that comes easy and requires not much of weighing, but there are also those which requires major changes and major adjustments once the choice was finalized.
There comes a time when we heed a certain call, as the USA for AFRICA said in that highly successful song We are the World. And the dilemma to help or not to help was resolved by the simple adherence to the kindness that dwell on every man. When Africa was starving the group banded together all the known stars in the music industry alligned and created several award winning and heartrending songs.
There were clear dilemma hatched in the writer’s mind when they made screen plays on Movies . The Under Siege Steven Seagal starrer, the movie Sophie’s Choice , the main character was forced to decide which of her two children would be sent to die , in the gas chamber. In the movie Prisoners , a father tortures a man suspected of kidnapping the man’s daughter and indeed the man being tortured was an innocent man. Of course in the local scene of the famous song is that song of Bodjie Dasig , which harps ; sana dalawa ang puso ko…
In life we are pushed and forced on a dilemma and even if we like it or not, a choice has to be made. Thus, we have to live by that choice.
We have to be certain on a lot of things before we embark on a decision . My students in Problem Analysis and Decision Making had listed several decision making tools that has its own local terms. These are design to bust the dilemma into a problem that can be solved scientifically and logically, here are a few of our local way of solving problems and breaking the deadlock of a dilemma by these English Terms on its simple waray-waray counterpart:
Cost benefit analysis- timbang timbang han presyo ngan gasto.
SWOT Analysis- Pagkita han Kusog, ug Kaloyahan, Higayon ngan Kadelikadohan
Force Field Analysis-mga puersa nga nakaka apekto han imo proyekto or bisan ano nga himoonon.
Break-even analysis – pag dangaw dangaw or pag sukol kun san o ka makakabawi imo puhunan.
This are merely suggested local dialect parlance on how to arrived at the best solution to a problem or solve a dilemma, merely suggesting that we waray had been doing decision making, solving problems with tools that are embeded in our psyche, yet we have them labeled, in our own special way….
