There is nothing more implacable than a decision waiting to be made.
It can shake you out of sleep, pulling the covers off, forcing you out of bed and to your feet. It can hover around you during your waking hours, beating at you with tiny, subliminal fists of frustration.
As time passes the decision grows and swells, bulges from barely sensed speck to overshadowing monster. Your attempts to fend it off become weaker as it smothers you in it’s soft folds, pushes you against the wall, and rolls over you as you try to run.
Poets write of Decision. In The Road Not Taken Frost wrote:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler
The poem ends with “…and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
In this poem Frost sees Decision as noble — Man choosing to follow his own path rather than following the crowd. Compare this to Dorothy Parker’s caustic and brutally direct ‘Resume’:
Razors pain you; Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful; Nooses give;
Gas smells awful; You might as well live.
No nobility here — life as a lesser of evils.
Not all decisions are the same. Whether to choose strawberry ice cream or chocolate is but a moment’s thought; after all, one can choose chocolate tomorrow when choosing strawberry today. There are an infinite number of these decisions made in a life.
Some decisions, though, can only be made after sleepless nights, and days spent in thought—little scales in your mind working overtime. To have a child or not. To marry or not. To make this move, buy this house, take this job, follow this path. Or not.
Regardless of the magnitude or its impact, once the the decision is made, you’re free of the weight, the monster has rolled on. This leaves plenty of room for Decision’s younger brother, Regret.