Someone has said to me a time or two, “You’re overthinking this.” Imagine that.

So how much thinking is medium thinking? Regular thinking? Is there such a thing as underthinking? (hmmm…another story there….)

In most things, I’m very decisive. And I mean BIG things. I’ve picked husbands and houses in a heartbeat. But little things? I find myself spending long minutes in front of a display of laundry detergent that comes in so many sizes, scents, and wash strategies that I’m forced to reflect on my entire life as a laundress. Remember the scene in the movie Moscow on the Hudson where Robin Williams, as a would-be Russian defector in the Cold War years, finds his way to the Coffee aisle in a supermarket? Dazzled by choice, he faints dead away. In American culture today, multiple choice has advanced into every product there is. Food. Cars. Cosmetics. Cat food. You name it. Doesn’t it make you weary sometimes?

Robert Frost, in his ubiquitous poem “The Road Not Taken,” describes a walker reflecting on a fork in the path, and the choice, which, in the end, “made all the difference.” We all wish we could look down the long paths at every fork in life to know what the result will be. The choices made by nature itself get even more plentiful. According to some mathematicians and quantum theorists working now, it’s possible that the universe is perpetually spinning off whole new universes with every quirk of a quark!

We have to make a lot of choices in life, and then live with the commitment at whatever level is appropriate. My faith. My friends. My laundry soap. My lunch. I just keep going down the road.
 
 

VILLANELLE FOR THE ROAD
 

The true way may be found, but at a cost.
The dashboard deity presides and judges.
Recalculating really means You’re lost.
 
Is this a bridge that I’ve already crossed?
I wonder as the snake of traffic nudges
between the tollbooths. What’s it going to cost?
 
I have my doubts, refusing to be bossed
by bland advice a nagging voice begrudges,
recalculating how you got so lost.
 
This muse would never suit you, Mr. Frost.
Bear left. Turn right. Take ramp. She never fudges.
The road not taken clearly has a cost.
 
But I’m footloose again, my baggage tossed
behind me. Good-bye, all you drudges!
Recalculating, nothing to be lost,
 
I roll along the road, a stone unmossed,
a stubborn certainty that never budges,
finding my way regardless of the cost,
recalculating, yes, but never lost.
 
 

Barbara Loots
The Whirlybird Anthology
of Kansas City Writers