Decisions

Decisions

I hate making decisions. 

In a restaurant, I clutch the menu, dithering between the candidate dishes till the waiter comes to me. Even then I dawdle, till I plump for one (or the other) of my favoured two. I then look around the table, with relief, and a faint glow of triumph, as though I had just completed an exam. And I watch with surprise as the remaining diners grapple so easily with their own dilemmas. 

Why do I so hate decisions?

I have often thought it might be because I have what Lewis Carroll called "the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind". That sounds a lot better than admitting to being hopelessly indecisive. But then I fear I am flattering myself; indecision is after all a handicap and not a super-power. 

Another explanation with which I have often toyed, is to suggest that instinctively and habitually I have guided my life by reason, rather than by emotion, or will. Which, I ask myself, is better: Shepherd's pie or Lasagne? Of course, I realise that I do not know; I lack any relevant data. It does not occurs to me that I could simply shut my eyes and imagine putting a forkful of each into my mouth.

My standard recourse is to toss a coin. Not an actual coin. That would be altogether too geeky! But I have evolved a random-number generator in a corner of my brain which I can spin. And as it slows towards its resting place, I point out to myself, that if I cannot detect a preference, then it cannot matter – much. 

Furthermore, if I find that I do not like the decision of the spinning coin, I can over-rule its choice. I remain boss.  After all, dammit, it is I, not the coin, that has to eat the dish. And thereby I have finally tricked myself into imagining eating that rather bland potato topping. Ugh!

– = – ≡ – = – 

Some decisions are more important than others. For example, choosing a wife. I do not remember floundering around that fateful, life-determining, decision in my case. Perhaps it was she, not I, that decided. But I do remember chatting with a younger friend just after I had married. "I know", I said, "you have practically none of the relevant information! You have simply to shut your eyes and jump, and hope for the best."  So, I suppose there must have been elements of that in my own case. 

Was it good advice? I sometimes wonder. It was fifty years ago. He is still married, while I have had thirty five years of a second bachelordom. Mind you. I have never regretted my decision to marry that girl, and we have three successful children to love and admire as they grow up; and learn, somehow, to make their own decisions.