"Decisions Decisions"

We, or at least I, often complain about the need to make difficult decisions. I think the very expression itself often refers to 2 different situations. In one sense when we refer to something as a difficult decision it is really about something we know we have to do, and as such is really not a decision but a required action that has some pain associated with it. Like the decision to stop smoking or to throw your kids out of the house once and for all.

Then there is the true difficult decision. One for which there is no clear answer and which includes at least 2 specific options. I suppose it could be a choice between 2 evils such as getting the cancer treatment or not, or a choice between 2 happy places such as buying your grandson his own tractor or letting him drive yours around. More aften than not though, I think the typical difficult decision has some of both, some pros and some cons to either choice.

I am currently facing one such decision and I don't really know how to go about making it. It is probably the biggest choice I have had to make since my illness, and one that will have significant impact on me for at least a year, and maybe beyond that. Do I list all the pros and cons and see which list is longer? Do I try to put a numerical value to each aspect and make a mathematical decision. Do I simply let it percolate in my brain and hope that the answer becomes clear. Or do I take the easy way out and simply let my wife decide. She had a answer about 3 1/2 seconds after I told her of the choices. Fortunately for me I have a little bit more time than that, and I know that despite the fact it seems obvious to Claudette I need to take some of that time to get it straight in my own head.

I wish I could share it with you and let you help me as well but unfortunately I can't do so at this time. Let me just say that it has some potentially tough down sides, some unmistakable cool upsides, plus....and here's the big one...other potentially major upsides. Like the possibility that it will get me out of this funk I've been living in and whining about for some time. And--- it just occurs to me that it would also give me a whole new reason to blog---maybe even with pictures!

So tough decisions are tough decisions no matter which type, but I suppose they should be readily preferred over no decisions at all. When you have no decisions left to make it's time to climb on the ice floe. Or check yourself into the seniors home where I ain't never going to go voluntarily. No disrespect to anyone but that's a decision I have already made. Hey I just had a brain wave. I think I'm gonna re-write my will to stipulate that everything goes to the local humane society if I end up dying anywhere other than in my home or on an ice floe. There, another decision made!

So please help. How do you make your difficult decisions?

On another totally unrelated note I have decided to put big Sister Cory on an ice floe. That way she won't be able to scare the hell out of me anymore. On Monday she returns from a vacation which she spent in a Florida hospital undergoing major emergency surgery. Please think of her and hope for a quick recovery. When I found out I felt like putting a few others on the ice with her, but then I quickly realized that my reaction was out of fear rather than any justifable anger, and so I put it away.

“We can try to avoid making choices by doing nothing, but even that is a decision."---Gary Collins

“A man without decision can never be said to belong to himself"---John Watson Foster

love
peter