I ripped the headline from The Daily Show, you probably knew that. Unfortunately I’m not just indecisive every 4 years, rather it’s every day. I don’t think I used to feel this way. I vaguely recall I time when I was certain of things, when I could make decisions with a minimum of thought and consideration, mostly because I didn’t have to do any thinking of my own. Lucky for me it had all been done for me by nice people who were always right. This is of course when I had faith, thinking about it now I don’t know if I can call it faith in God, it seems more accurate to say it was faith in my parents and family, and faith in the LDS Church. Why would my parents lie to me? Who else has my best interests at heart? If the Church or my parents said “No”, that was good enough for me, even more it freed me up from having to make difficult ethical decisions. I didn’t have to way both sides of a question. I didn’t have to exam things from different points of view. This had been done and the correct answer package delivered. This made life at times very easy, it made me decisive and quick, all with any lack of guilt or doubt. Better, it made me feel superior, I knew what was right and everyone who didn’t agree was wasting their time debating and questioning, worse they were sinning and needed to be corrected, either in this life or the next. Self righteousness is never pretty, though we see a lot of it in the media, where every public person dresses themselves in it, as if it covers over a plethora of sins, the least among them being poor judgment.
Now though, I don’t have the benefit of people making decisions for me (except he “experts” in Sacramento and Washington D.C.) I’m constantly examining the reasons behind the decisions I make, this coupled with the fact that never had decisive nature, can make coming to conclusions difficult. It is hard for me to have definitive reasons for the things I believe now. I can support causes and beliefs, but it is only because the evidence to support them is stronger than the alternatives, nothing is set in stone, nothing is permanent and while I feel I am a better person for this, it comes at a price. The price of not knowing whether I am right, and after 2o years of having that it can be unsettling when it is gone, like a skiff suddenly being cut from it’s moorings, I find myself adrift in a sea of thought and opinion.
