Decisions Suck

The older I get, the harder it becomes to make decisions, and the more I hate having to make them.

Is it just that I have more responsibilities than when I was younger? Not really. I was married with a child when I was twenty-two. So no.

Is it that life is simply harder now? That’s silly. It was tough as hell back then, just like it always seems to be. No. That’s definitely not it.

The problem is my experience. That’s an odd way of looking at things, right? Most people think that having a lot of experience to draw from is very helpful when it comes to making crucial life decisions.

Perhaps. To some extent. But all the experience in the world is not going to predict the future, and that’s kind of what I try to do with my experience. I compare the past to an imagined future. I paint a “realistic” picture for myself. And that picture looks a lot like William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Dante and Virgil in hell. This happens with every option available to me.

And that brings me to the second problem that comes with age: I keep coming up with more options and each additional option make my decision that much harder.

I miss how I just knew what had to be done when I was younger. It wasn’t easy, don’t get me wrong: I’d typically make impossible choices and then break my sorry butt trying to reach the goals I’d set for myself. I’d raise the bar way beyond reach, sometimes out of sight. But once the decision was made, I never looked back. It was just a matter of how I was going to make my goal into a reality. I was single minded, focused, and extremely driven. My ex-wife says I was obsessive. Whatever.

Be that as it may, I made very tough decisions easily and I never looked back.

Today? Well today I’m not the same. My values have changed. For most of my life, I sacrificed family for career. Trying always to make family a close second to whatever I was doing, and always not quite succeeding. Because if you want to really excel in something, there’s very little room for anything else. That’s just the sorry way of things. There are 24 hours in a day and most of us spend a third of that time sleeping.

So here I am, stuck at the crossroads, so to speak, with the parking break set. Only there aren’t just two paths. No sir. There are a ton. Because I can think of many options. Many many options. I didn’t used to probe my options very deeply. Now I do. I think way into the future, drawing on years of experience to fill the canvas with the darkest of possibilities.

You can look at anything anyway you like. Having a Ferrari can be the coolest thing ever or it can be a major burden.

Really?

Sure. Look at is this way: you’ve got a Ferarri, but now you’re worried if you’ll be able to make the payments, if the damned thing will appreciate like the dealer promised or if you just bought yourself into financial ruin. And forget taking those hot wheels for a spin. What if some truck spits up a rock and scratches your ride? Where can you park a car worth the average three-bedroom home with a swimming pool without worrying about it getting stolen? And in this economy, you can’t even sell the damned thing and try and at least get your money back. A Ferrari? No thanks, buster. Not unless it comes with like a billion dollars.

And we’re talking about a Ferrari here. Not one of the typical bleak options I come up with to those impossibly difficult decisions that keep popping up.

I want to be like I was when I was younger. But I’d have to wipe my memory for that. One thing I’ve still retained, however, is the ability to never look back once I’ve decided on something.

But that’s kind of problem, isn’t it? I mean, I have to be so damned sure what I’m doing is the best option available to me that there’s no chance I’ll look back. And I’ve simply been through too much to be able to con myself into believing that so easily.

So I sit there, in the middle of the road, trying to take in the beautiful view. Trying not to panic about the traffic that’s piling up behind me. Trying to live in the now, and all that jazz.

But the reality is that setting the parking break while I keep going over my options again and again is a decision in itself. It is always now, as Eckhart Tolle astutely points out. At the same time, as Mona Lisa Vito said in MY COUSIN VINNY, “My biological clock is ticking.” Ain’t that the truth.

I’m not twenty anymore. Sorry. I know it’s a shocker, but there you have it: I’ve got four kids, two dogs, and two mortgages—responsibility up the wazoo.

So I’m getting older here just studying my options. And with each passing minute, the people waiting for me to decide (the cars behind me, if I’m sticking with my metaphor), are growing more and more impatient.

The excuses that I’ve been giving over and over again such as: “I don’t want to do anything I’ll regret.” Or—and this is my all-time favorite—“This isn’t just about me: I’ve got a big family and many people’s lives will be affected one way or the other, so I can’t afford to make a mistake,” are growing old, and people don’t want to hear them anymore. Hell, even I’m sick of the bullshit I tell myself.

Maybe I should take a lesson from the younger me and just release the parking brake and floor it. At least that way, all I’ll be worried about is steering and I’ll be driving too damned fast to ever look back.

It is just me or are you also starting to feel it’s getting harder making those tough decisions?