If I decide to leave the house with a wet head today, my hair is gonna freeze. It’s like 20 below outside. If I decide to jump in the bathtub, which is FULL of water, with my hair dryer, I’m gonna fry myself. These decisions, and ones like it, are pretty easy to make. I know what the outcome will be and I can make a decision based on how the outcome will affect me. Thankfully, I don’t think about those too much. Some people say that when they get to the edge of a cliff or something, they feel an urge to jump. I don’t.
I am standing in the bathroom drying my hair. I have a song by the band called “The Clash” in my head, “Should I stay or should I go now…if I go there could be trouble…… if I stay there could be double…come on honey let me know….should I stay or should I go?” Decisions, Decisions, Decisions! I can almost hear my mother saying those words. I am running through the positives, the negatives, the benefits, the consequences, the yin, the yang, every possible angle. It’s not helping. No amount of “figuring it out” ever really does. Primarily because I am not trying to figure out what to do, I am trying to figure out which choice will prevent anything bad from happening or cause something good to happen. What I want is to control the outcome, the future. I go round and round in these crazy circles because, of course, this is impossible.
The decisions that seem to be the most difficult for me, ironically, are the ones that don’t appear to matter that much. They have no apparent good or bad consequence. The inconsequential ones that aren’t heavily tipped one way or the other……like for instance, Should I go to the party or not? I don’t want to miss the party, but I don’t want to get dressed either. If I go, how am I going to feel? If I don’t go, how am I going to feel? I don’t want to be uncomfortable. I don’t want to feel regret. Regret is the worst. Especially, if I could have easily done something, yet chose not to. Regret that I missed whatever it is that I never could have known I would miss. Try as I may, I can never avoid pain entirely.
I have a confession to make….I am a coin flipper. Yes, I flip coins. I am the queen of coin flipping. Queens of coin flipping, flip in a certain way. There are rules. We don’t just flip and go.
Coin Flipping:
I begin with any coin…penny, nickel, whatever. I say “heads go, tails no” because quite often, this is my dilemma, silly and trivial as it may seem. So, I flip…heads go, tails no? I rarely accept the result with any kind of ease. I am usually compelled to then check it with the good ole’ “best out of three” method. I may also debate the legitimacy of anything other than a quarter, even though initially any coin was completely ok. I search the house for a quarter. Find the quarter. Flip again. Flip “best out of three”. If I drop the coin, it doesn’t count. This presents a small problem in terms of time constraints because I can’t catch. I seriously cannot catch. If you are ever present for my coin flipping process, you are apt to see me crawling around on the floor looking for the coin or slamming my foot down on it as it rolls and spins. There is a photo of me trying to get something out from under the dryer with one of those wire cat toys. I was undoubtedly, flipping.
Unless you are a “flip and go” type person, this flipping is an endless search for a sign, a guarantee. Flip and go people make it quick, have fun, don’t care, don’t want to think about it, like to gamble, etc, etc, etc. They really do, flip and go. Queens of Coin Flipping like me,……and this is key….have already made up their mind! WE ALREADY DO KNOW, but the answer is sooooooooooo stuck in our heads, we can’t release it. Up in the head, there exists all the “I shoulds, well maybes, if onlys, and what abouts?” It’s like gluey glue. While initially seeking some kind of relief with this coin flipping process, we have turned over any freedom we do have, the power within us, over to some random coin. No matter how many times we flip, it won’t tell us anything. The answer is in us, not the coin!
When making a decision, I can actually feel the shift from that knowing place deep within me, up and into my head. It could swirl around up there forever if I allow it to. Time may even make the decision for me if it stays up there long enough. I already know the truth. I merely have allowed the truth to travel up into my head where it is bombarded with questions. These questions are just noise, chatter, “old tapes”. I do not have to pay to much attention to them. I am declaring that all queen coin flippers unite!!!!!!! From here on out, we will trust ourselves. We will pause, take a breath and quiet ourselves enough to hear the small still voice inside our hearts. We will not give our power away to some little coin. We will Honor Our Truth!.
Debra Hadraba
Honor Your Truth
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