“Make up your mind!”

The command, overheard, lingered in memory.

What a complicated manufacture, making up one’s mind. Who’s in charge? How to decide? Some decisions are no-brainers, every voice aligns; but what about the quandaries, with their yeses and no’s and maybes sucking like quick-mud? Should we resort to daisy petals – “Love me, love me not” – or augury – or a coin-flip?

We decide, we humans, on countless occasions daily. The process is similar in large matters and small. Similar and invisible. Seldom do we know why we choose and when we think we know we’re likely wrong.

Right now, I can’t make up my mind what to write. Splayed on my work-couch, aquiver with vim, dog Henry at my odoriferous feet, I’m “good to go” – but where? I’ve been reading Robert Louis Stevenson, whom I hardly knew, and this triggers thoughts, but no, it’s too soon, I must know him better, for I sense already, notwithstanding his excellences, I’ll be no idolater. Hours I may devote to him but not months or years.        

I’ve taken up with my pal Emily Dickinson again. With 1775 preserved poems, there are always more, but ED is MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) if you’re not a fan. Her allusive concision puts her out of the range of most neophytes. We live in a breezy, browsing age. Who can spend half an hour on a dozen oddly punctuated, sort of singsong lines?

Horrific headlines supply grist aplenty, but what more to say? Today’s involve a gubernatorial candidate who swaggers online as a homophobic, transgender-titillated Hitler lover – and his fellow Republicans can only express “concern” about his behavior. When, we wonder, does self-abhorrence kick in? But such pusillanimity in elected officials is old news, alas, what to add except “Yuck”?

The flamboyant goldenrod in the lower field dazzles, nature’s last scream against killing frost. Tempting to wax lyrical about nature’s changes – non-political – not too esoteric – but also evasive of issues we might affect. I recoil from “nature writing” for what it’s not – serious about the one calamitous animal in our midst, namely us.

It’s too hard making up my mind about what to write – or about anything else. One curse of so-called retirement is a superabundance of choices. Out of countless, how best to spend one’s time?

Various representatives of body and psyche collaborate in the communal activity of making up one’s mind. Intent, desire, memory, aptitude, enthusiasm, probabilities, audience, all must be weighed. We tally an internal p-and-l. In my interior congress indolence often volunteers: why not do nothing! On non-controversial topics, agreement is quasi-automatic, as in the US Congress – a vote to adjourn, say, is usually popular. Other wrangles can extend tiresomely into the wee hours or (even more tiresomely) get deferred for further debate. Sometimes morality barges into the discussion – what’s the right thing to do? – which annoyingly complicates matters.

I used to be quicker making up my mind, having less time. Now I can dither, though I don’t want to. I often feel like kicking myself in the pants, a tricky maneuver. About what to cook for dinner, say, I may find myself musing interminably. “It’s not that important,” I berate myself. “What we don’t eat tonight, we can eat tomorrow!” Yet still I muse.

My most agonizing decision is what to read next. I surround myself with houris murmuring blandishments. From where I sit, I discern at least a dozen titles batting their eyelashes. I mean to read them all – and will – if I live to a hundred and retain my wits!