Is paper/rock/scissors a valid decision-making method? Since I’m trying to make a gigantic, life-altering decision, obviously I would do best two out of three. Or perhaps I need a Tarot card reading. Or I could pose the question to all my Facebook friends, and go by whatever option gets the most votes. I might write each decision on opposite sides of the room, spin around until dizzy, and then point with my eyes still closed. Similarly, I continue to contemplate getting wasted drunk and writing a note to myself about what feels the most right, with all the hidden insight that excessive alcohol might bring out.
And these are just my better ideas.
Seriously, I cannot make this decision. I won’t do it and you can’t make me! I want to shout at the universe, complete with a stern pout and possible foot-stomping or middle-finger-flying. It’s too big a decision, it affects other important people too much, and it’s all on my shoulders, for better or for worse. I’m not gonna! (I’m sticking my tongue out at y’all, now, too, moon and stars and everybody.) The recovering perfectionist in me is pissed because there is no “right” answer. The anxiety monster in me is terrified because there are major negative consequences on both sides, but which negative consequences will be worse- and for whom? If I make this decision and the worst happens, it’ll be all my fault and no one will ever forgive me and I won’t even be able to live with myself- assuming I’m still alive after the worst. Oh, hell, no, y’all, I am not taking responsibility for this. No, siree. I’ll just wait for a definitive sign from the heavens first, thanks.
Except I have to decide. Even if I pick the default option of doing nothing, that’s still a decision that I will then have to live with, with all the positive and negative consequences that entails. And there are consequences for my whole family. Ugh! Part of me, of course, recognizes that I am ridiculously privileged to even have options, despite them not being exactly the options I’d like. Who the hell gets all the options they want in life? Nobody I know, and probably nobody I care to know. So I think about other folks with trickier and much more dire choices- or lack of choices- and I shame myself for bemoaning the fact that I have to / get to make a decision in life. Unfortunately, the shame doesn’t actually change anybody’s situation or help me make a decision. So here we are.
I have a deadline. It’s almost here. I don’t want to say the date out loud, because then it will be more real. But it’s very, very soon. (Shiver and shake!)
Because apparently, life requires some modicum of planning, and institutions like schools and jobs and banks always want to know whether you will be utilizing their services or not in the coming cycle. Those nosy bastards. Then there are the other folks, close friends and family, who also insist that your most major life choices affect them. They’d like to plan accordingly, they say. And yet they refuse to take the decision off of your hands. Selfish, selfish, selfish!
Instead of deciding for me, loved ones give me sage advice. For example, a dear friend encouraged me to listen to my heart. The problems with that are that a) my heart is divided in multiple directions, and b) my heart usually leads me down the most difficult and dangerous path available. That certainly hasn’t been exclusively awful; as a matter of fact, I’m pretty damn pleased about many of the outrageous decisions I’ve made. Once I’ve made a decision, once I’ve survived some of the results, I get very zen about it all, magically. This is forming and growing me as a person, and all that. Even the decisions I made that, in hindsight, were excessively foolhardy and ill-advised, I can shrug my shoulders and toss it into the pile of “makes for a great story fodder.” I am the main character in my life’s novel, right?
(Joyful Girl, by Ani DiFranco, is one of my anthems since adolecense that encourages this philosophy for me: “The bathroom mirror has not budged. The woman who lives there can tell the truth from the stuff they say. She looks me in the eye, says, Do you prefer the easy way? No? Well then, okay, don’t cry.”)
But I feel a distinct lack of zen now that there are small children involved. These little humans are counting on me to not ruin their lives. So the question then becomes, which path will ruin their lives less? (They’re gonna need therapy either way, as my dad would say.) But how can I calculate the least-harm scenario? There are short-term and long-term effects for them, but most of the long-term effects are potential effects. There’s a whole bundle of maybes in all my equations, which is yet another reason why I’m not a great mathematician nor decision-maker.
So if the short term effects for them are fairly negative, and then the hopefully excellent long term effects go all awry, then I will have made the wrong decision, right? Alternately, if the short term effects are mostly positive, and the long-term effects don’t have much room for astounding but might not be abysmal, either, does that mean that’s the right choice? Either way, super-duper disasterous things can happen! And where do my needs and desires, and my life partner’s needs and desires, all fit into this? What about the If Mama Ain’t Happy Ain’t Nobody Happy effect? How much and in what way does that count in this? Where is my text book? Where is my tutor? It’s like you just learned to do division and then they throw some complicated thing into mix, something like, I don’t know, exponential numbers. And the teacher doesn’t explain worth a damn in the first place; they’re just throwing random numbers crap at you, so how can anyone expect you to ever solve this problem?!
My perceptive and astute therapist mother reminded me to “use wise mind” as my guide. Wise mind, theoretically, is that brilliant and perhaps fictional combo of emotional mind and rational mind.
Here’s a little visual about “wise mind” for all you visual learners out there. I acquired this image from this site.
Does wise mind exist in me? Hmmmph! Sure, I guess it’s in there somewhere, since I can do both rational or emotional exceptionally well. But blending them? Quieting my anxiety and ceasing to analyze long enough to listen to the deeper part of my being? Ha. When? Between my full-time paying job and my full-time mother job and my full-time housekeeper/cook job, I’m pretty booked. Ain’t no space left in my calendar for an appointment with wise mind.
Maybe that’s an excuse, though. I mean, really I know what path I want to walk. I already know, because I know exactly who I am and what I want to do with myself in this one little life. I know what my values are. I know what I have to contribute to a community. I know what decision I think will put me in a position to live more in line with those values and let me contribute to the universe best. I already know.
But as soon as I say that, my raging, roaring bear named Anxiety rears up on its haunches and yells, “What if you’re wrong, though? How do you know that you’ll be able to live your purpose in life on this path? Maybe you can find your purpose on this other path just as well. You just need to look harder.” Then I get new information that kicks rational mind back in to gear, like a know-it-all-doctor from the 50s calmly blowing smoke in my face, telling me I need this treatment for my hysteria. “Look at these facts,” that jerk says. “This is a bad time. All of the evidence points to disaster.”
Back and forth I go, several times a day. Every day I debate and deliberate, tying my stomach in viscious knots, winding myself up like wind-up doll, and waiting to see what decision I’ll have made when the coil stretches. Every day I dream of somebody coming to take this weight off my shoulders, of someone telling me the decisively “right” thing to do. Except I’d probably STILL find some reason to keep arguing about it. “But read this study first!” I imagine I’d say.
I suspect that either way, it’s gonna be ugly and it’s gonna be lovely. No matter which path I take, I’m doing somebody wrong. All concerned parties are going to have some negative consequences. No matter which path I take, there will be some negatives and some positives and ultimately I cannot predict what they will be or how wonderfully joyous or horrendously grave life might be in the future. Which is probably a truth about the Whole of Life every single day, we’re just not usually as hyper-conscious of it as I am right now with this blasted decision.
Meanwhile, the deadline looms. Weigh in on your decision-making advice, before it’s too late and I decide to just flip a coin!! Seriously, folks, I don’t ask for advice every day; now is your chance to give me your best decision-making guide.
exile to mexico 
When confronted by a dilemma that has good and bad points no mattter which way I go, I make a list and write down the pros and cons. Just the act of listing, for me, is cathartic. usually by the time I’m finished, a clear answer comes to me. Hope you figure it out soon.
Yep, writing is ALWAYS helpful for me.
But on this one, I have made various lists. I’ve journaled about it on numerous occasions. And now a blog post! And still I continue to be wishy-washy. ARG!
Guess I haven’t written enough yet. ; )
Hugs! Thanks for writing!