on decision (or, indecision. or, why.)

i've been doing a good deal of thinking.  (it's really cliche to start a blog with "i've been doing some thinking" but i did it anyway.) thinking about how we make decisions and the impact decisions have on our general happiness.

decision making has never been a particularly strong point for me.

clarification.  daily decision making about stupid little things has never been a particularly strong point for me.

topher can regale you with stories of me sitting on the grocery store floor sorting through brand after brand of shampoos.  or having to wait for me to hear what everyone else is ordering for dinner before i could decide.

i like to think my decision making skills have grown in the eight years since we first met.  what i've learned is that i am someone who makes decisions quickly when i am able to inherently trust my own feeling or perception about the topic at hand.  for some reason though, i am also someone who inherently distrusts decisions made completely based on feeling, without any thought given to reason or logic.

so i've become a decision maker who more likely makes a decision when all of the variables are presented to me and i am aware of the possible impacts of the possible decisions i could possibly make.

which is a very low standard to hold myself and my decision making too, obviously.

(sarcasm.)

i think i'm deeply afraid of making that one wrong decision.  that one wrong decision that will alter everything i know to be true. even more terrifying, that one wrong decision that i don't even realize is that one wrong decision.

so i guess i come down on the side of believing in the act of over-thinking.  of considering every possible angle of the potential decision, and considering every possible outcome, and which one i most desire.

because even more terrifying to me are the decisions we have no control over. the ones other people in our lives make, that impact our every thought about what we thought our future would be.  the ones that are completely unclear in the varied sides that were considered, the possibilities that were taken into account and the why that decision was made.  the ones where we're not really sure- that other person did consider all the possible outcomes of that decision they made so hastily.

those decisions that we don't make but that still lead us to hurt, to confusion, to a re-imagining of our future that we weren't prepared for- those decisions are the hardest.  the ones that i mull over for days, trying to understand the why.

and that's all i have to say about that.