“I must have a prodigious amount of mind;
it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!”
it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!”
-Mark Twain
I often feel that way when faced with some momentous decision—or even some lesser one—and sometimes it takes me so long I think I must have an even greater mind than he. Those of small mind must be lucky indeed.
They say one ought to choose the lesser of two weevils.* Now that may apply very well to politicians—although I am not sure it does in fact—but the principle assumes that there is a lesser evil. Sometimes there is not. Many times we are faced with a thousand different decisions of equal or near-equal value and goodness. That is when the mind becomes stymied and one begins to feel the weight of his mind's size.
What a free nation are we—free to choose whatever we wish. We are faced with hundreds or thousands of options for everything ranging from vehicles to shampoo and from how to spend our leisure time to which emoticon to tag onto a text message. Those who thought we deserved thousands of choices must not have taken into consideration the energy and willpower that making these decisions requires.
After facing all of those choices that daily life thrusts upon us, it is a wonder we have any willpower left for aught else. No wonder there seems to be a fear of commitment.
I must confess I find myself practically powerless when facing a choice of two goods. Of course making no decision means a third path of lesser good and therefore losing both the goods instead of enjoying one. Yet how is one supposed to choose between them?
A little girl in France now known as Therese did not much bother with that choice. She tells the tale, in her autobiography, of a time when her older sister offered for her to choose among the goods of the various dolls and toys she had outgrown. Rather than choose among them as her sister expected her to, or waver in long indecision as I would be wont to do, she merely stretched out her arms and unceremoniously took the entire basket, announcing, "I choose all!"
That is where I too stand. Until my body fails me or reality reminds me of its impossibility, I must have all the goods, material and spiritual, that I can take, whether from greed or holier motive.
I choose all.
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