You Are the Sum of Your Decisions

I recently went to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City to see “Madame Butterfly,” one of best-known operas in the world with a central character who undergoes an intense emotional journey accompanied by heart-wrenching and gorgeous music.

It is a tragic tale of a young 15-year-old Japanese woman who kills herself after having been used and discarded by a thoughtless, capitalist, and child-abusing American soldier at the beginning of the 20th century. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to get past the racist and jingoistic overtones of the libretto and so the opera has never done much for me…until a few nights ago.

Midway through the opera, Madama Butterfly is confronted with the possibility that the man she had given up everything for – family, reputation, and financial well-being – didn’t take his marriage vows seriously. Despite waiting three years for him to return to Japan, she realizes his recent arrival in Nagasaki isn’t to live with her. He is there to lay claim to the child she had given birth to nine months after their wedding night and take it back to the USA.

Unlike the other times I had seen this opera, I was suddenly and unexpectedly confronted with what is for me the greatest tragedy a human being can experience – the consequences of a series of bad decisions without the ability to rectify them. I was engulfed by the thoughts of wrong turns, roads not taken, and regrets for the rest of the evening.

In opera, bad decisions are usually a result of immense passion gone unchecked, usually of a sexual nature but also sometimes caused by greed and societal pressures or norms. A senior executive’s decisions in the 21st century may have less to do with unrestrained passion but, like in opera, our unconscious biases, beliefs, and short-term thinking can still wreak havoc with our decision-making and hence our long-term fulfillment and happiness.

I came away with renewed conviction that I am on the right track with my purpose in life – to help myself and others make the best choices possible and find ways to correct past mistakes. That’s when life becomes joyous and not an ever-ending series of disappointments and might-have-beens.