The Silver Lining

It's neither profound nor particularly insightful to realize that attitude is everything in life, but that's unlikely to stop me from posting about it.

Some time ago I took one of those personality tests, and if it was on the Internet than it must have been in the past fifteen years. That would be even more frightening, not because I was seeking wisdom from some website, but because by that time in life I'd already gone through my marriage, risen to middle-management, and had successfully "completed" more than one program designed to treat my ills. Still, if that's when it happened, that may explain why I call myself a slow learner.

But none of that matters.

The only question I remember from the test wasn't particulary hard: it was about my favorite color. Answering that was a snap, but the explanation disturbed me. Picking gray as my favorite color, according to them, meant that I was indecisive, and that answer has disturbed me ever since.

I don't like to think of myself as indecisive, but there you have it. I'm wishy-washy, unable to resolve things or commit, and very likely to end up as road kill. The worst thing about it is that I had a hunch it was true.

When I was in high school I ran across some psych book that talked about inferiority complexes, and I was pleased and eager to claim that label. It gave me something to be, something others would understand, and by doing so, solved all my problems.

I was less encouraged to find out, years later, that I was incapable of making timely decisions, or any at all, and that's been a private shame for years. The more I experienced, the more I could see it, though, and I spent not a little time trying to be decisive. The results weren't encouraging, but I'd be damned if I wanted to go through life not making up my mind about anything.

Then, yesterday, it struck me. I was watching Michael Schumacher's last race and my company was seeing every event unfold and immediately explaining it. No matter what happened, the event was seen as justification for pre-conceived opinions, was viewed only as an example for previously held beliefs, and I was enlightened.

Some people, it seems, have this world all figured out. When they see something new, they strive for an answer and compare the new experience to what they've already decided. They're looking for answers, and use the fodder of existence as it were to prop up their beliefs.

I don't do that, not so much.

As I mulled this over I realized that, instead of answers, I take things in for the purpose of asking questions. I don't particularly care what the answer is, nor am I in any hurry to resolve them, but I just love answering the question in as many ways as possible. I'm happiest when asking questions and not all that concerned with the outcome.

When there are multiple answers to a question, and I think that's almost always the case, I quickly think no one answer is better than the others. Any one of them works to support a world view, but I'm not as convinced that any particular world view is inherently better than another. You can describe the beauty of a sunrise in religious terms or scientific ones, as a model for art or symbolic of some human condition, such as renewal, and every one of the answers is as good as the next. It just depends.

While I'm still less than happy with being indecisive, I can take solace in seeing it as just saying that I like asking questions more than answering them. Sure, we can come up with answers, but I'm not sure that's the point.