Tag Archives: life-choices

Odds and ends

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I spent a good part of the afternoon figuring out how I’m going to set up the new solar heaters I purchased for our above ground pool. I used to have 4 large panels that I laid across our garage roof, but I’m not going up on the roof anymore.

This was a decision I made at the start of last summer, deciding that it would be my last season using the roof panels. The process of pulling large plastic solar panels up on a roof and fastening them both together and to the roof is a bit challenging: Completely doable, but challenging. I could probably do it for another 10 years. But I don’t want to play the odds and so I’m putting an end to going on the roof.

The odds that I don’t want to play with are the fact that for older men over 50% of serious injuries and accidental deaths are from falls. The higher the fall, the great odds of it leading to death. A roof is a very high place to fall from. So at the start of pool season last year I decided that I was no longer going up on the roof. I don’t have a fear of heights, I don’t feel unstable. I just know that it’s easier to overestimate my capabilities as I get older, and I’d rather go up on the roof a few less times than possible rather than 1 more time than I should have.

I made a similar decision last summer. My buddy and I took scooters on a 10 minute ride from his house to a pizza place, where I had a couple beers with my pizza. Before heading home, I apologized to him and said I wanted to Uber home because I’m a lightweight with my alcohol and I didn’t want to ride the scooter home feeling a little inebriated.

Essentially, I’m reducing my injury risk, recognizing that even a small fall would mean significant recovery time at my age. This doesn’t mean that I’m living a life of minimizing the odds of every possible danger, but it does mean that at my age I’m getting smarter about when to end things and reduce the risk of injury.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place (and…)

The origin of the idiom ‘between a rock and a hard place’ can be found in ancient Greek mythology. In Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus must pass between Charybdis, a treacherous whirlpool, and Scylla, a horrid man-eating, cliff-dwelling monster. Ever since, saying one is stuck between a rock (the cliff) and a hard place (the whirlpool) has been a way to succinctly describe being in a dilemma. (source)

There is a simple strategy that I often use, both for myself and when working with students, that seems to help when I/they are stuck ‘between a rock and a hard place’. The strategy is to find a 3rd choice. The interesting thing is that the 3rd choice doesn’t have to be great, it can be worse than the other two, but it does something tricky to your brain. When you have to choose between two tough choices, you can think of it as a scale, and you weigh things on either side. The problem is that you think of one side and add weight, then you think of the other side and you add weight there too. Your brian does this indecision dance between the two tough choices, never really allowing you to pick one over the other.

Sometimes, by seeking out a 3rd option, you can discover something you would not have thought of when putting yourself in a dichotomy. However, if you are truly stuck between a rock and a hard place, you probably don’t have a good 3rd option and so the 3rd option is often even worse.

When you add a 3rd (undesired) choice, you can no longer look at the problem as if it is on a scale. The extra option becomes a comparison point for the other two choices. So what your brain does is that it weighs your original two options against the new option, instead of against each other. When this happens, one of those options will often seem better than the other, in a way that comparing just the two on their own didn’t.

When dealing with students, this also helps give them an ‘out’. Often a student is choosing between doing the right thing which is uncomfortable, or accepting a consequence. In this situation, it might seem logical for a kid to make the ‘good’ choice. However, an oppositional student, or a student that is embarrassed, might actually choose the more painful choice. It’s not like they are actually choosing it, they are choosing not to do the thing you want them to do as an act of defiance. A third choice takes away the oppositional response. Now they have to weigh three things, and the better choice looks significantly better than the other two.

So the next time you are stuck between a rock and a hard place, you can torture yourself with a tough and unclear decision, you can avoid the problem altogether (knowing full well that it won’t go away), or you can come up with a 3rd choice to help you decide… it’s up to you!

What do you see?

When you say that you like nature, do you like viruses, cancer, and decay?

When you say that you enjoy the city, do you enjoy traffic, higher crime rates, and sewage systems?

When you say that you love someone, do you love their idiosyncrasies, failings, and character flaws?

When you say that you are interested in something or someone, what do you see? What do you choose to overlook?

When something or someone bugs you, how much does your disposition affect what you see?

Someone just took the last piece of a cake… are you pissed off that you didn’t get it, or genuinely happy for the friend that did get it? How much does a small decision like that affect your mood? Or your attitude towards your friend? Or your overall happiness in the next hour?

You have incredible power to decide what you see, and to create a universe in your mind based on these decisions.

What are you choosing to see, and what kind of life are you living thanks to these choices?