BIG DECISIONS ARE TOO HARD?

Big decisions come every day, one fastball after another.

In the game of life, you stand in and take your cuts.

You might get on base, you might strike out.

Or you might opt out of the whole thing? Wait a minute.

If you grow up in a certain culture, like a logging camp, you do what everyone else has done, is doing, plans to do.

Your daddy was a logger, you’ll be a logger.

The man in the picture was a logger. He’s my grandpa. My Dad is in the picture, too.

Grandpa: Any schooling after the eighth grade is a waste of time.

Instead of following in his father’s footsteps, he joined the Marines, went to Korea, got out and went to college.

He took the first job offered and moved to a timber and fishing town on the Oregon coast as a newly minted insurance adjuster.

North Bend had logging jobs, fishing jobs, mill jobs, store jobs, longshoremen jobs, and all the other jobs that keep a community hopping.

All of them ran rife with big decisions like, ‘Should I get a different job?’

The folks that answered that question with a big YES took steps toward a different life.

That’s what my Dad did. He joined the Marines, went to Korea, then college on the G.I Bill, and got a college boy job.

He put on a white collar but still kept the smell of a chainsaw and cigarettes near him.

To his boys: If we cut firewood and sell it in town, then you can drive this truck to school with the money for gas and insurance.

So we cut firewood and sold it in town. It was the same leverage used on the wrestling team.

If the coach thought you had potential for bigger and better things, like a college scholarship, you were invited to join the Rhino Wrestling Club and cut firewood to finance road trips to national tournaments.

It was an honor in both instances. And hard-ass work.

 

No Decision = No Failure?

Does that sound right to you? No decision means no failure?

I’ve learned, and of course it was the hard way, but I’ve learned that if you don’t make a decision when one is needed, someone will make it for you.

My wife urged me to tell this story recently:

 

I joined the Army to become a General; my discharge rank was Private First Class. What happened?

The smart guys who make big decisions at the beginning of every Army career, in other words the Drill Sergeants, saw your boy show up in the ranks and started the grooming process.

I was going to be a super-soldier, they said. I would be an example of what the Army is doing right after the fall of Saigon.

They chose me as Platoon Guide and gave me a single room with curtains, a rug, and a bedspread on a single bed.

The rest of the guys had bunk beds in the barracks.

I was sent to leadership school while everyone else picked shit with the chickens.

I was supposed to feel special and it was working.

The senior Drill Sergeant coached me up on a great life in the Army.

It all ended with a fire drill in the third week of training.

We woke up in the middle of the night to loud whistles and yelling to fall into formation, “NOW.”

My platoon was on the third floor. Some of the guys fell on the stairs.

When asked to report to the Captain yelling across the formation in the darkness, I froze.

My guys were hurt and I was expected to answer the Captain’s call for a report with, “All Present And Accounted For, Sir.”

But I didn’t. I explained the problem to the Drill Sergeant to no avail.

He said to tell the Captain what he wanted to hear, you know, like a good soldier.

But I wouldn’t.

The next day I was no longer the Platoon Guide with a future so bright I needed shades.

I moved from my apartment room into the barracks under the bunk of a guy named Brisco who hated white people. At first.

We eventually became buddies when I called him Marlin Brisco the Magician.

 

I had decided not to participate in symbolic bullshit while my guys were laid out in the stairwell.

The groomers who saw me as their latest golden boy made my Army career decision for me.

I wasn’t worth the risk to their reputations if I wouldn’t follow sensible orders like answering “All Present And Accounted For” when asked to report.

My virtue was still intact, if not my future in the Army.

Later on we learned we could question what we perceived to be illegal orders like, “Waste ’em.”

“Sir, do you mean fire into the trench filled with women and children until they’re all dead? Sir, I cannot follow that order.”

Some hours after having gathered the villagers together, Calley approached Private First Class Paul Meadlo, who was watching the Vietnamese.

Calley asked Meadlo “if he could take care of that group.”

Calley then walked away but returned a few minutes to ask Meadlo why he had not taken care of the villagers.

Meadlo replied,  “We are. We are watching them.” Calley responded, “No, I mean kill them.”

Calley and Meadlo then opened fire on the unresisting, unarmed villagers with their M16 rifles, killing the entire group.

 

Making Big Decisions For Others

A parent’s job is making decisions for their kids.

Part of it is helping them understand why making decisions is important.

Why, you ask? So kids can grow up and understand when to make the big decisions they’ll face on their own.

I’ve had the good luck, the incredible luck, of having kids able to decide things.

They are fortunate to have a mom who likes to make useful plans.

“If we don’t make plans we’ll never do anything.”

I’m a fortunate father and husband to have such a woman around.

More than once we’ve done things together that would have been difficult convincing a second wife to do.

That’s the conclusion I came do after doing things I figured a second husband would never do, like spending time with the kids.

My wife likes to point out that I have no friends.

I like to point out that she’s wrong, I do have friends. I know people I consider friends.

She also likes to point out that, ‘Your kids are not your friends. You are their father.’

I spent yesterday doing what I like doing with friends, hanging out, fixing things, playing guitar, watching the Oregon Duck Football team face another challenging team from Idaho.

The afternoon went to my youngest, the evening with my oldest, while my wife got a break to spend time with herself.

Did she like it? Did she like her alone time knowing her old man was keeping company with our kids?

I checked in with her every few hours so she knew what I was up to.

What was I up to? Just having the time of my life with my favorites.

 

Where You Are?

Big decisions are like The Big Time.

Where is The Big Time we hear about? Los Angeles? New York?

It’s right where you are, big timer.

No matter where you are, you’ll make decisions, small decisions that turn into big decisions looking back.

I was living alone in a studio apartment in Northwest Portland, living the bachelor life with the world at my beck and call, or at least at my doorstep.

I ruled my world, which didn’t take too much since it was so small.

I gave a girl a Darth Vader toothbrush once. Biggest decision I ever made and I didn’t even know it.

She didn’t have rotten teeth and bad breath, or a husky voice.

She didn’t want to rule the universe, or so I thought. Slowly, ever so slowly, she took over.

Then we got married and have lived happily ever after.

So far. Lol. (Hello dear)

How do you practice making decisions, big or small?

By being more aware of your actions and how they affect others.

Why don’t you decide to do that, to be more aware?

You can do it.

You might even decide to click a link to another post and leave a comment.

This is the usual outcome on that decision: