decision-making
When I was in college, I heard a presentation I’ll never forget, probably because the speaker handed out candy. At the beginning of his talk, he passed around, to a crowd of several hundred people, boxes of dum-dum lollipops. “You don’t have to take one,” he said. “But they’re free if you’d like one.” So I took one, sucking on the fruity flavor while he continued.
His message was about waiting for the right thing: specifically in relationships. He wanted us college kids to not rush into anything, but to be willing to patiently wait for the person who would be right for you. Then he pulled out another box: packs of jolly ranchers. This time, you could only take a pack if you hadn’t already eaten a dum-dum. Of course, I thought. Well, if I’d known about this, I wouldn’t have had the sucker. He never said anything about choices.
He talked about Ruth, in the Bible, and how God brought her together with Boaz. He said in the middle of Ruth’s story, you (and she) wouldn’t have known what the end would be: so with life, he told us.
Then, you guessed it, he pulled out the final candy: Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. You could only take one of those packs if you hadn’t had either of the previous choices. Now, the very few (a handful, seriously) were left: they probably wondered if something better would still be coming. But then again, if they loved PB cups, they probably wouldn’t care. I think that was his point: when you go for something, make sure it’s worth it, make sure you want it.
To me, that’s the difficulty with decisions: sometimes I’m just not sure what’s worth it and what I really want. There are pro-con lists, flow charts, advice from friends … but, in the final analysis, I have to just choose, and that can be daunting.
Today I logged into my stock portfolio, ready to buy shares in a company I really believe in. I watched the ticker go up, down, up, down. I passed on buying because it was up $0.05, then watched it rise another $0.20. Buy it then? What if it goes down? Well, what if it goes up?
You just never know, with decisions. You don’t know if there’s something great—or not great—round the corner, and so it’s scary. All you can do is research, plan, and hope. Hope your investing and budgeting and controlling brings what you’re hoping for, and hope that what you’re hoping for is worth it.
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2 Responses to “decision-making”
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Sounds like a fun (and yummy) presentation! Regarding the stock-buying, it’s exceeding rare that you can time the market. Just invest what you can and in the long run, the market generally goes up. As to relationships, don’t you just know sometimes? That even if the timing isn’t right or if you’re not at the place in your life to make a serious commitment, that, god (or fate or anything else)-willing, you’d really like a chance with the boy you’ve been with since high school. Years down the road, you’d really like to say, I choose you, over all the choices that I’ve had and the choices that I might have in the future.
No? Well, maybe it’s just me.