Growing up I went through stages of being annoyed at my dad for refusing to give me answers to all my important life decisions. There were times I just wanted him to tell me what to do;
it would be so much easier if he would just define the path for me. It's not that he never gave me advice, but rather the kind of advice he gave me was less specific and more about becoming the type of person that makes good decisions than about what decision to make. But sometimes he didn't even talk about that. All he would do was remind me that there are always the logistical things to think about - the stuff I CAN evaluate, like money and the fact that I don't have it - and then tell me to make the smartest decision based on where I was at, and what I wanted my future to look like. And boy, sometimes I was just so mad that he wouldn't just
make the decision; tell me which was the better option! Because deciding big stuff is hard - really hard. There can be big consequences for decisions, and when the decisions are big ones then you can be sure the consequences are bigger too. And that's scary. And I would rather not be responsible for screwing my life (or anyone elses life for that matter) over.
As I am growing up in years, I am learning to appreciate what Papa gave me when he refused to give me those answers. Instead of a lack of caring, which I sometimes suspected was behind the silence, Papa was purposefully using his silence to invest in the idea that if I made my own decisions early on in life, then, once I get to the reeeaally big decisions, I'd know how to approach them, what to evaluate, and how to not freak out and ask somebody else to make them for me. I'm still working on it but I think, thanks to Pops, I've gotten a little better.
Don't worry, I will still be the most indecisive person you will ever meet when it comes to the little stuff.
Because, honestly, I don't care what restaurant we eat at.
