silver convertibles with wedding decorations


September 15th, 2008, a Monday

If you stopped to think about it, you probably couldn't believe how many decisions we make each day.  Granted some of them are pretty small, but you make them, consciously or otherwise.  For example:

Should I get up right now or continue to lay here in the comfort of my bed for another minute, two minutes, thirty seconds, one minute and four seconds? Do I have time for breakfast? What should I eat? When should I stop pouring the milk on my cereal? What will I wear? How long will I stay in the shower?  Exactly how hot should the water temperature be? Should I talk to my dog or just pet him?  Will I call my mother today?  Where will I go for lunch and what will I have?  Should I work out?  Should I lift weights and which ones and how many reps?  What about the treadmill?  Or maybe the eliptical?  What should I wear to the work out?  Should I do laundry tonight?  Go out with the gang for happy hour?  Drive home if I have too many?  What will I watch on tv?  Should I bet on the game?  When will I go to bed?  Should I open the windows?  Will I need an extra blanket?  Set the alarm?
Should I get up when I can't sleep and have something to eat?  Should I read or watch tv?  Surf the internet?  Or just close my eyes and hope for the best.  And while they are closed, what should I think about?  Or nothing at all?  Take a Tylenol PM?

There's probably only one in that list of seemingly small decisions that could actually turn into one of the big life decisions.  Drive home if I have too many?  First you have to choose, decide, how many drinks to have.  Then whether you are going to get in a car.  If you choose to drive drunk, you could get caught, or get hurt, or hurt someone.  In any case, you would probably go to prison where most decisions would be made for you.  So is part of the definition of freedom that you get to make your own decisions every day?

Do a lot of little decisions make up our big decisions?  Or are there much fewer really big ones that are made outside of the thousands of little ones we make every day?  Are they related?

If you call off your wedding at the last minute, that is a life changer.  Suddenly every decision that was going to be made for two, goes back to being for just one.  So in that case, a big decision then heavily influences our future little decisions.  Maybe it was all those arrangements, and seeing what your future spouse is really like under pressure that made you change your mind.  Maybe it was the future in-laws.  In that case, the little decisions would influence the big. 

Oh, my gosh.  The more you analyze this stuff, the worse it gets.  You know how when you look at a word for a long time it just starts to look like the weirdest collection of letters you've ever seen?  And you think you don't really know what it means or where it came from?  Maybe it is like that with decisions.  If you think about them too much, they get too heavy.  Maybe we should rely more on our heart, our intuition.  If you think you can't hear, you probably aren't listening.  So often we don't realize that after we have acted on logic and reasoning, our hearts and intuition are still not settled.  That makes for conflict and affects more decisions than you can even imagine.

So if you are going to buy a car, and you do the research to find the best buy with the best gas mileage, and you think you should get a conservative color like black, white or silver, but you really want red.....you can have it both ways.  A practical decision with an intuitive flair.  If only all decision making were that...black and white.

If nothing else, maybe today you could try to become aware of all the decisions you are making.  Every little one.  Unless it happens to be your wedding day, which is unlikely because rarely do people "decide" to marry on a Monday unless it is a totally spur of the moment decision.  See what I mean?  The good news is that a lot of decisions have an out clause.  If you marry wrong, you can divorce.  If you hate your new job, you can find another.  If you don't like the show you are watching, you can change the channel.  But be careful.  A lifetime is measured by the quality of all the decisions we make combined.  You know, one thing leads to another.... 

GR