How to Make Insignificant Decisions of Profound Cosmic Importance

Are you agonizing over a decision? That was me this week. And over something trivial: What was I going to do on Thursday night?

The options:

• Go to my normal life drawing session

• Go to an oil painting workshop

• Go to Brazilian jiu-jitsu at my new gym

I recognize this may not sound especially exciting to you, Reader, but to me this felt something like, “steak, pizza, or sushi” or “beach, mountains, or lake.” It all looked so good.

I started doing the analysis. The kind of analysis that one applies to a game of chess. Looking at each line. Weighing the pros and cons, comparing them with my life goals, my principles. What are the best possible outcomes of each endeavor? And the worst? What is truly important in life? What matters?

If this decision sounds small to you—if it sounds frivolous—you’re right. You’re absolutely right. And therefore I was also entertaining some guilt around not making the decision.

This is absurd, I know. But this is really what it’s like in a guy’s head sometimes.

The analysis spiral made me think of a passage in G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:

“Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense, every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else... Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion. Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses… Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame.”

Chesterton is writing here from a Catholic perspective. So not only are you making a decision, but your tiny decision actually has divine significance. Thanks, G.K., now I have that to think about, too. Or if you prefer pagan cosmic significance, Marcus Aurelius can remind you that “What we do now echoes in eternity.” Good grief.

As my thoughts strayed from the decision on hand, I began to think of some clients. I have multiple guys right now who are in discussions with their wives about starting to “try.” Bringing new human life into the world is no small thing, of course. Slightly more important than my Thursday night plans, anyway. So these gentlemen have expressed their anxieties and excitement about fatherhood for months.

For a certain kind of guy from a certain culture, the pressure to have his first kid at “the perfect time” is overwhelming. It is one more thing to be optimized–along with this career and performance and so on. As I hear more and more about “optimized paternity,” I become more sympathetic to the Catholic perspective on birth control. Let ‘er rip, my brother! You’re going to be a great dad. But I digress.

The Diceman Cometh

A decade or so ago I read The Dice Man. It’s the story of a guy who outsources all of his decisions to the roll of a die. It explores our relationship to overthinking and control. Published in the 1970s, it’s a period piece as well. It came out of a culture that was not yet as “optimized” as ours. I think you can see where this is going.

Maybe someday the “code” by which I live will be made explicit. Maybe I will plug it into ChatGPT:

“Hey Chat. Important things include doing good work for my clients, being a good son, a good brother, letting the people around me know that they’re loved, my relationship with the universe, working on my art, and so on. What should I do on Thursday night?”

I’ll have a perfect algorithmic answer for every decision that I make. I’ll be able to model for my clients just how easy it is. That I never agonize over decisions because it is all handled by my Principles, my Values, my Code.

But until then… I rolled a six. And I thought of Bill Clinton, who reflects in My Life:

“Choosing a career is like choosing a wife from ten girlfriends. Even if you pick the most beautiful, the most intelligent, the kindest woman, there is still the pain of losing the other nine.”

Jiu-jitsu it is.