Last week, my interior decorator fired me. Before I sound too fancy, let me say that our family has lived in the same house for 27 years and we have done no work on it at all except for 12 years ago when I did some painting. So it's gotten to the point where if we were to sell the house, potential buyers would traipse through whispering, "I can't believe these people lived like this." You do kind of get used to your own torn curtains and stains on the furniture.
But redecorating is not the point here. It's that I was fired. And I can't shake the feeling that it was not for the reason I was given which was that a much bigger project had come his way so he couldn't take on mine as well, but because he sensed in me an ailment for which, up to now I've not been able to find a cure...indecision.
"We could do granite or Caesarstone for the kitchen counter tops," he said.
"What about marble?" I asked
"Marble is beautiful. But it requires more maintenance."
"How about soapstone?" I asked.
"We could consider soapstone," he said.
"I have a friend who has butcher block," I said. "Butcher block is nice."
"It's nice. I don't see it for your house," he said.
"And what about tile?" I asked.
"That's what you have now," he said slowly and deliberately.
"Maybe I don't need to replace the counter tops at all," I said.
I should have paid more attention when he didn't say anything after that.
Twelve years ago when I decided to paint, I had the painter put up dozens of samples. I would write in pencil the name and number of that paint in the corner of each sample until my wall resembled the deranged writings in the office of that paranoid schizophrenic mathematician in the film A Beautiful Mind. And when I was nearing spending the budget I had computed for painting the whole house just on the samples, I put the brakes on and chose beige. It had a fancier name, but it was beige. So after all of this deliberation you'd think I'd be happy with the beige I chose. I was not. I chose a beige with too much pink in it and not enough gray. Eventually I didn't even notice the pink except when I was in a really bad mood and started to question my whole life. After a while I stopped asking everyone who walked into my house, "tell me honestly, what do you think of this color?" because I found most people said, "what color? It's beige." I made the choice and it's twelve years later and I've lived with it. I was ready to begin again, until my decorator fired me.
And this was not the first decorator I had met. I met with many others because, no surprise, I was having a lot of trouble making a decision about whom I would be comfortable working with. So finally I made my choice. I picked the one that fired me. Like the beige walls, perseverating over a decision does not necessarily mean that the right decision will be made.
During any decision process I tend to ask everyone I meet what their opinion is. You might be surprised to know that my dentist was reluctant to weigh in on whether I should spend the money on expanding the closet in my bedroom. I probably made the wrong decision when I chose that dentist.
There are apparently supposed to be benefits to getting older. I often read quotes from people who are in their 60s and beyond, that now, finally, they are not plagued by what others think, they know themselves better, they don't sweat the small stuff anymore. I've reached that age and I'm still sweating the same microscopic stuff I did when I was younger.
I find myself drawn to articles by psychologists and philosophers about this. Ruth Chang, a philosopher, in her TED talk says that by learning to make choices between things that are on a par (as oppose to easy choices like should I have donuts and ice cream every morning for breakfast or mix it up with protein and fruit once in a while) says "...when we face hard choices, we shouldn't beat our head against a wall trying to figure out which alternative is better. There is no best alternative. Instead of looking for reasons out there, we should be looking for reasons in here: Who am I to be?" And neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin, says that "We live in a world with 300 exabytes of information (300 billion billion), ...It's as though as brains are configured to make a certain number of decisions per day and once we reach that limit, we can't make any more, regardless of how important they are."
While I'd love to tell everyone who gets impatient with me, "Hey get off my case I've exceeded my exabytes," in my case I think my angst over making a decision might be the result of letting all those devils I carry on my shoulders speak too loudly. So what if I choose a pink marble countertop in the kitchen that doesn't win raves from anyone or I pick a lime green color for my car that horrifies my kids? If I like it then why should I still have so much anxiety?
I'm pretty sure that the overriding reason for my reluctance to commit to a decision is my fear of regret -- regretting that somewhere out there was a better decision I could have made. I can't help but worry that I've done something irrevocable. Is everyone else making the right decisions so that their lives are perfect while I am destined to live an entire life with a lime green car? I have to remind myself that I can make a change. Aside from having children there is really no decision that a person can make that can't be tweaked to some degree or another. And, oddly, I had absolutely no confusion over that decision. At the very least I want to embrace whatever decision until I make another one. Which, remember, I get to do. We all get to do this. Make a decision, live with it and then change it if we want to. Find a decorator, lose a decorator, find another one. It sounds so easy.
I like that thought. There is no one perfect answer in most of the choices we are required to make. From everything I read, it might be that meditation can be a very helpful tool in reducing the stress that comes with my indecisiveness and clear my mind of its chaotic ping ponging. It's possible that the best answer will come to me in this way. I will definitely try to practice this just as soon as I can decide whether to choose Transcendental Meditation or Mindful Meditation. And who knows... those might not be the only two choices.