decisions, decisions

last week, i went to a fabric store with a friend. she's making a new bedspread for her bed and i've been helping her design it. she had bought some lengths of beautiful cream-colored silk and we had settled upon a strip of colored silk for down the middle of it. we went to the fabric store and she quickly found the bolts of silk and grouped them into two possibilities - one with bright jewel tones and one with more muted autumny colors. we talked about both possibilities for a bit. then, she took off her necklace, which has an interesting silver symbol on it that i didn't recognize. she held the chain between her thumb and forefinger and asked, out loud, whether the bright colors were the right decision. the necklace hung still for a moment and then began to move in a counterclockwise circle above the brilliant blues and greens. then, she stilled the necklace and put it above the bolts of autumn tones and asked the same question. again, the necklace was still for a second and then began to swing back and forth, as if on a pendulum. she smiled and said the circle was a "yes" and the pendulum swing was a "no." so the necklace thereby confirmed her own leaning towards the bright colors. and she bought them.

sabin was along and has said several times since that she wished she had such a necklace. and we've talked about what decisions it would help her make. she apparently wants most to be confirmed in the order of her favorite lesson horses at the riding school, which right now is zidan, lizette, felix. whereas my order of them is lizette, felix, zidan. and i suppose that's what makes her doubt her own order. so we also talked about how it was her who rides them and who knows best and how she really didn't need a necklace to tell her that.

and it got me thinking about how i make decisions. because we make decisions all the time, having no idea of what the ultimate outcome might be. if you think about it too much, you could actually become quite paralyzed by the whole thing.  and i find that i am a very quick decision-maker, especially on big decisions - divorce, marriage, houses, jobs. and once i decide, it's quite a short distance from decision to action. on the other hand, i can be pretty indecisive - especially about little things like what to make for dinner.

husband is a more considered decision-maker than i am. we went out driving past the two farm places we've been looking at yesterday. when we started out, husband was pretty sure which one he prefers, but after our outing and our ensuing conversation, it's now switched. me, i'd be ok with either one, but since we're not ready to make an offer right now (we MUST sell our own house first, we are NOT sitting with two mortgages), i don't feel any strong need to make a decision about it right now. i have this confidence in the back of my mind that the right decision will be crystal clear when the time comes. so i'm quite content to endlessly discuss the possibilities of both properties and even flirt with other properties (like one with a big riding hall and stalls you could rent out or one with a vineyard - mmm, wine).

of course, all of these discussions and husband's endless drawing of plans of the properties and where he'd build and change this and that (his father was an architect, so he has an inner draftsman), are surely part of our decision-making process. but how do you know when you've reached the right decision?  maybe in the end, it's no different or more scientific than swinging a necklace above printouts of the two properties and seeing whether it goes back and forth or round and round.

how do you make decisions in life? both little and big?