Lines and Diamonds

First, be aware I'm a little crazy. What follows is a series of articles in which I intend to explain life boiling it down to its fundamental parts.

I've always said that life is but a bunch of choices and this can't be more evident in the system I'm about to present. But let's see what's coming, first.

1. Lines and Diamonds: I explain the parts that this system, and thus life, is made of.
2. Life's But a Bunch of Choices: I explain the system in action and give some examples of it in use. I also intend to speak of its interaction with Murphy's Law and explain its usefulness.
3. Holy Quantum Diamonds, Batman!: I explain how this system relates to Quantum Physics.

Life is choice

Before getting into the first part per se, I want to explain a little bit my statement of "life is made of choices" in case you don't know what I mean. Well, it's pretty literal. Every aspect of life, your life, is governed by the choices you make. What about destiny you say? You choose your own destiny, or perhaps you chose it, or you will choose it, eventually. In the end, it's all choice. Decisions. Options. Whatever you wanna call them. A situation, problem, event occurs in life and you're left in the position of making a move, choosing what to do next about it. That's all there is to life.

Now with that out of the way we can delve into the basic parts that constitute our system, that we may call Lifechart, since it's basically a way of seeing life as a flowchart. Or you can call it simply by its constituting parts Lines and Diamonds.

Remember, all life is made are choices, so lines and diamonds are simply two ways of representing the same thing: a choice. Some decisions are more complex than others and thus this is how the systems graphically addresses this issue.

The Line

The simplest of choices in life are represented in our Lifechart as lines. The line has the characteristic of being a simple choice between two options. And these are usually:

A) Facing a complex decision (diamond), or
B) Going back to the previous complex decision (diamond)

One of these two options, or plans, is going to be more obvious than the other, and this is the way we connect decisions together in our life.

The Diamond



Not all in life is so simple. Complex decisions come in the form of what I call diamonds. They are situations in life that have more than 2 choices. What happens is, people usually confuse diamonds with lines, and think their situation has only two possible outcomes. This close-mindedness is usually the cause of great disaster and regret.
Diamonds, or complex decisions in life, have the following options, or plans, to be resolved with:

A) The most obvious choice according to your personality and usual course of action
B) The most obvious alternative according to your personality and usual course of action
C) The non-obvious, underlying, option. We often do not see it and thus fall into the trap discussed above
D)The stupid, or dumb, option. Like plan C, it is not obvious, it is in fact, the hidden, not-considered option; because it is so divergent to the normal course of action that is regarded as nonsense

Regardless of its label, the most beneficial choice we make in a certain situation can be any of those options. And any situation in life can theoretically fall into the line-diamond principle. If we make an effort and see the hidden C and D plans of a diamond, we're looking at the big picture and not thinking-square or inside the box. We are, instead, being open minded about a subject and thus, able to make a better decision.

That's it for part one, we'll see how these two guys connect on part II of this article.