Decisions

I watched this Acorn Woodpecker for quite a while.

He was working his way around an old tree that looked as though generations of woodpeckers had already declared war on it. Holes everywhere. Big ones. Little ones. Deep ones. Some apparently abandoned long ago.

Then he showed up with an acorn. And stopped. I couldn't help wondering what was going through that little bird brain.

Okay. Now where do I put this thing?

There must have been fifty choices right in front of him. I had to laugh. I know I have spent a lot of my life trying to get something. A job. A house. A relationship. Enough money. A little security. An opportunity.

We convince ourselves that if we can just get that, things will become simpler. Then we get it and discover we've merely earned ourselves another decision. Which house? Which job? Do I stay? Do I leave?

Do I spend it? Save it? Say something? Keep my mouth shut?

Some decisions change our lives. Most don't. Some turn out wonderfully. Others leave us wondering what in the world we were thinking. And occasionally we stand there with something valuable in our hands, staring at fifty perfectly good holes, afraid we'll choose the wrong one. I don't know which hole the woodpecker eventually chose. Maybe that's why I like the photograph. He wasn't staring at an empty tree. He was staring at possibilities.

Maybe sometimes that's enough.