Lehmer's observation
This morning while writing an email to a friend, I came up with the following. It may not be original, but it's original to me; I don't think I've heard it before, so I'm claiming it:
"If you have to make a pros-and-cons list to decide, then it already sucks."
Meaning the cons have already won. Because if you're making a decision about something important and you're in a place where the choices have you feeling wishy-washy and you don't see an obvious answer then you're either considering the wrong thing, asking the wrong question or deciding at the wrong time. Perhaps you're being forced to. As my friend Jim is fond of saying, "Being an adult is having to make hard choices from limited options with limited data in a limited amount of time and deal with the consequences." And that's true. But I am not talking about that.
What my observation is about is when you have to decide about something that's fundamentally important to you, something life-changing. Look at it this way - do you think anyone would do a pro/con list for choosing whom to marry? No, I think we'd all laugh at that. Yet there are often other decisions just as important that people make up their minds about basically because they weighed out the best. But where's the passion and commitment in that? Look at how many people decide their careers using that process and end up hating what they do.
"Why did you go into accounting?"
"Well, there was a need in the market and I am good with numbers and my parents thought it would get me a job so that's what I picked."
"Are you happy doing it?"
"What, are you kidding? It's a miserable job."
I think one of the things we owe God for the life He gives us is passion. He doesn't want us to just muddle through life making choices because the pros scored "6" vs. the "5" in the cons column.
What do you think? Are there any important choices you're making or have made based on a 6-to-5 outcome? Why?
6 comments:
Honestly, I think there are too many different choices in life to have such a hard and fast rule to cover them all.
Whether the choice is really major or really minor, there will be times when any available option has pros and cons. There's not always a clear winner available.
A recent real-life example for me: If and when to euthanize my dog. It may not seem very major in the big scheme of things, but it was quite heart-wrenching either way. Watch him suffer pain and slowly spiral toward inevitable death, or humanely relieve his suffering. Give the medicine a little more time and hope for a miraculous turnaround, or admit that he's worsening by the day and isn't going to get better. And on and on. There was no other choice except to weigh the pros and cons of each option, because things beyond my control were presenting them to me, and demanding a decision. Even when I made the hard decision, my heart still didn't really have peace or resolution. I agonized over "could have", "should have", and "would have" for a long time. I sort of still am, even though it's too late to change what I chose.
When we uprooted ourselves from California and moved to Tennessee without much of a plan in place, we were faced with lots of 6-to-5 decisions along the way. House hunting is a process inherently fraught with these sorts of close contests.
Or maybe I've wrongly applied my logic to types of situations you weren't really talking about? I hope I didn't miss your point. If so, do you have specific examples that illustrate what you're saying?
CH,
You raise good points. Per your decision with your dog, I will point out that the second part of my saying - "then it already sucks" - is true.
And I can't really talk to the second example since I don't know why you "uprooted [y]ourselves from California and moved to Tennessee without much of a plan in place".
But what I was really talking about was the big, strategic life decisions. Who to marry. What to do with your life (which includes career but also much more). If you aren't finding the passion there, then perhaps there's something fundamentally wrong.
Plus I will add the following disclaimer - I do not write this blog for you, nor anyone else. I write it for myself. My observation was one I was making to myself, because there are some areas in my life right now where I think I am experiencing pain points because I've been asking myself the wrong questions and focusing on the wrong areas and making 6/5 decisions for too long. And I want to change that. Everyone who reads my blog should remember - I'm talking to myself first. I take joy in having others read and comment here, and your comment certainly did give me some things to think about. But since I wasn't talking about your life, I sure hope you don't take offense.
Where in TN? My wife is at a hen party in Pigeon Forge this weekend.
Jim - First of all, absolutely no offense is taken. Folks ought not put thoughts and ideas out as comments in other people's blogs if they're not prepared to discuss what they said and why they said it. That sort of drive-by commenting, with no sense of personal investment in what one is saying, is one of the worst things anywhere on the internet -- right next to the "pat answers for everything" comments. :-)
I've found that some of my best realizations come when people express a view which seems to be in opposition to mine, or which makes me think through whether the reason I think or feel a certain way is based on something solid, or is simply "what I've always been told and accepted".
I also get what you mean about working through things for yourself and blogging about them.
You're sure right about the dog thing -- it was doomed to suck no matter what I decided.
We're near Nashville. Pigeon Forge is a few hours east of here, over in the mountainous part of Tennessee. Nice area over there -- we hope to take a weekend off and get a cabin there sometime.
Uh, hope this isn't a stupid question -- what's a hen party?
CH,
"Hen party" is a Brit term for women's night or weekend out. Some can get pretty rowdy. In this case, though, imagine seven middle-aged women in a rental cabin drinking and eating and gossiping and laughing and crying for the weekend and that should about cover it. :o)
This is the third or fourth year where a cyber group of friends from around the country that Les is a part of have gotten together. She looks forward to it all year. I've gotten the obligatory call for today already - they had just been up for an hour or two and were heading out for lunch - that was at 2:15 EDT/1:15 CDT, so you know how long the first night together last night went.
It's great that they do that. My wife has found a very similar "band of sisters" with our small group and a few other friends/neighbors. They get together for Girl's Night as often as they can manage -- they drink margaritas, sit in a hot tub, play games, or do some sort of themed party event, or whatever.
I don't even know everything they do, actually, but I suspect that at least part of it is sharing personal information with one another that would make me uncomfortable if I knew they were doing it. I base that notion on the fact that my wife will occasionally drop me bread crumbs of info about things that were discussed, and even that seemed like too much to me.
But that's a whole other subject, as far as why when I get together with the guys, it doesn't involve the same type of detailed information exchange as seems to occur when the girls get together. Perhaps men just aren't as forthcoming in general, or we've been taught that certain things aren't acceptable to talk about, or... I don't know.
CH,
I share some pretty personal stuff with my closest friends. It may not be the same kinda things my wife would share with her friends that would make me uncomfortable, but then again it may be something that she would feel uncomfortable with me sharing. But yes, at some level guys just "hang out" more.
Peggy Bundy: "Al, what are you thinking?"
Al Bundy: "If I wanted you to know, I'd be talkin'!"
:o)
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