Chixe

Being married it tends to be a joint decision on a lot of things. I see that as a partnership and we make choices using that principle. I am lucky as my husband was and is my best friend - makes asking your best friend a bit easire.

Needs before wants as I have learnt a long time ago. I think at the end of it, I'm influenced by my friends, expecially all the strong women in my life. They give me the option and then I'll just make up my own damn mind about it. :)

I seek the opinions of those close to me but I make my own decisions. I realize that sometimes I'm too close to a situation to be objective about it. That doesn't mean I always make the right decisions but I always learn something. :)

I'm reminded of the bar scene in Good Will Hunting where Will rips the pretentious Harvard grad a new one for being unoriginal, for not having his own opinion.

I'm definetly influenced by the opinions of those closest to me, wife, family, freinds. I want to be challenged and exposed to something other than the thoughts in my head. However, I tend to be a self-contained unit. I'm at ease following my own compass. Doesn't always lead me straight but so be it.

I do my best to follow that saying of the Buddha,

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

Walt Whitman wrote something similar in his Preface to Leaves of Grass:

re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul

I try to live by that. Sometimes it works, sometimes not but it's a good marker for me.