We make choices everyday. They are also decisions. We choose to do “X”, or we decide to do “Y”. Sometimes I think about them being separate and distinct from each other, even thought they are effectively synonyms.
Choices, are easy. “Let’s have pizza for dinner”, or “I am going to lay on the couch”. Decisions are those which need a little more thought, data gathering, something — that makes them feel harder. Even if they are not. Remember, a decision is just a choice.
Case in point: For our 5 year wedding anniversary, my now ex and I had our wedding date tattooed on our forearms in Roman Letters.
Quite cool, quite romantic at the time. Now, we are “exes”, and I decided I wanted to cover up this tattoo. It no longer has a positive meaning.
I decided I wanted to replace it with something that for me symbolized new life, so I chose on a rose vine. I searched the internet until I found one I liked and I felt would adequately cover the old one. And I chose to color the roses.
I chose red for love and admiration; lavender for unique love; and, white for innocence and new love. I chose these colors for me and my journey through life.
And I decided in the spur of the moment to do this last night.
While I have three other tattoos, I am still a newbie. My artist explained that doing color was going to be hard because of the size of the individual roses, and trying to cover the dark purple of the previous tattoo. And the detail is fine enough, there would be some lost with the color.
Oh — did I mention I only have a black and white laser printer?
Initially I was disappointed. I realized I was annoyed because he chose not to ask about color. I was annoyed that I didn’t have a color printer. I was annoyed I chose not to speak up about the color sooner.
As I stared at it while trying to decide if I was going to ask him to add color anyway, I saw the complete mastery of the image. The shading, the shaping, capturing every detail in the picture I had chosen and given to him.
I walked out as a happy woman. Loving the mastery Zeke demonstrated in the art, loving the gentle advice he gave me about adding color. He would have done it if I had asked.
I don’t think it would be as beautiful and symbolic.
We all make choices and decisions everyday. The first conscious choice is if we are getting out of bed. And from then on, whether we realize it or not, the day is a constant stream of choices and decisions. In software engineering we would use “if x; then do y; else if a; do b”, etc. (Or one of many other similar statements.)
Take time with those decisions that are going to be harder or impossible to reverse. Those are hard decisions.
And we all make bad choices and decisions. Like, putting your partner’s name or relationship dates on your body. Be nice to yourself when a bad decision is made. And recognize it may be a long time before we realize the decision wasn’t the best.
