Decisions, decisions

Nice little piece in the Guardian Weekend the other week  suggesting how nice it would be to be one of the forty passengers stranded, although safely, on a cruise ship stuck in an ice-flow for a few days. Once, the author said, everyone realised that they were going to be OK there would be no alternative but to celebrate the lack of choices and enjoy the party. In a life where choices often overwhelm us it is good to have some of them taken away. Really?

I think I may be the opposite. I am speedily decisive. I note that quite a lot of the choices that come hurtling towards us are not between good and bad but simply between two ways of progressing. It is failing to make a choice that slows us down. Carrying on, in any direction, is good.

I often have no idea what I want to eat in a restaurant until the last minute but never slow everyone else down. I just plump for something as the order is taken. I will have eliminated everything I don't fancy so what is left must be something I want to eat today. Who cares which I choose? You don't. And I act as if the decision was perfect so it was.

We don't need our choices reducing. We need to understand that in many choices there is not right and wrong but two rights, two alternative ways of making progress.

That will be twenty pounds.