The potatoes, which had looked fine when they were harvested a few weeks ago, had been over taken by some kind of disease that was quickly spreading through the lot of them.
So my job was to do one thing......help throw away the bad ones.
Sounds simple, right?
Well... not for me.
The problem is, I have a really hard time making decisions when there is a grey area.
Add in one of the highest costs of living, where a dozen eggs runs up a bill of a $8, and suddenly my "clean your plate" mentality kicks into overdrive and makes it extremely hard to trash the questionables.
I wanted to believe the potatoes would stop going off.
I wanted to believe those small blemishes would somehow not effect them.
I wanted to believe the disease would stop spreading if I just got rid of the worst bits.
As an optimist, I wanted to believe in those potatoes.
But what was the cost?
If I left a bad potato in with the good ones, it would more than likely spread to those around it, damaging the years crop even more.
So painfully, I threw them out. One by one, I got rid of them. By the time we had finished, more than half of them had to be thrown away.
So what could I take away from this random farm task?
Life Lesson: Start making decisions. Being indecisive is no longer an option.
As part of Allison Vesterfelt's 10 day packing light challenge (If you're not already reading her blog, you probably should be.) I'm giving up not making decisions for my day 9.
Leaving questionable potatoes in the trailer was like refusing to make a decision. Not a lot of good comes from it.
In fact, I'd argue that indecisiveness is never a good thing and often leads to regret.
My fear of making the wrong decision has led me to handing over the control to someone else time after time. It started small like "what do you want to drink with dinner?" or "what's your favorite color?" but soon I found it hard to make any decision. At one time, the magic eight ball app was on my favorites list. Case in point: I went to college to study a subject that someone else told me I would be good at. When I changed my major, I picked (cough cough copied) a path that the guy I liked had suggested because I couldn't stand the thought of my indecisiveness being broadcast for the world (ok... maybe not the whole world) ; Major: UNDECLARED. Four years of college later, I graduated in a field that although I enjoy, I never truly chose for myself.
Refusing to make a decision can also spread thin limited resources Take a simple example like shopping. If you need one pair of shoes and can't make a decision, you either spend twice the money (limited resource) buying both or have wasted your time (limited resource). I see this in a big way when I look back at the past few years. I church hopped, looking for the perfect church (FYI.... there's no such thing) and never really found a home for several years. When I made a decision and picked ONE church, I found a family, a home and a safe place that helped me grow.
So if we're being honest, refusing to make a decision is a decision in itself.
One of my favorite TED talks, Dan Ariely's "Are we in control of our own decisions?" , highlights a lot of irrational things humans do. One of them is leaving the default. By not making a choice, I have opted-in or opted-out without even realizing it, leaving the choice to someone else while at the same time using up precious resources.
I don't want that any more. I chose to make this decision.
Thanks Potatoes.
