Recipes for Adequacy

There are two types of decision makers. Satisficers (yes, satisficers) make a decision once their criteria are met. When they find the hotel or the pasta sauce that has the qualities they want, they’re satisfied. Maximizers want to make the best possible decision. Even if they see a bicycle or a backpack that meets their requirements, they can’t make a decision until they’ve examined every option. Satisficers tend to be happier than maximizers. Maximizers expend more time and energy reaching decisions, and they’re often anxious about their choices. Sometimes good enough is good enough. ~ Gretchen Rubin in The Happiness Project:  Tip #7 of ‘Ten Tips for Being Happier’

There are inevitable problems with dividing the world up into two kinds of people, yet we do it and often such differentiations can even be insightful. For instance when I asked myself which of these I was, I almost said Satisficer at first because accuracy and adequacy are something of a mantra for me, but then realized that like Hamlet I often will do a lot of maximizing metal wrangling for seeming little positive effect. (I think also wanted to avoid Satisficer because it sounded too much like ‘sacrificer’, but it’s supposed to sound more like ‘suffice’.) Naturally I asked my wife and before I finished reading the above out loud to her she said I was a Maximizer.

Well, after some thought I realized the problem was allowing any person to only be one or the other; obviously we all do a little bit of both, and which we do when probably often depends on how much importance we place on the decision at hand. Yet, I recently store-shopped car seats for a child and checked every available display model for the specific feature I was looking for (maximizing options), but since achieving a certain safety level was my criteria – not the specific feature – I took the first seat I understood to have safety level I wanted (Satisficing). In fact, the item I bought didn’t even have the feature I searched so diligently for, but of course observing me check each model is more externally visible than seeing me check an internal safety standard.

And I think this has some relationship implementation – one variable is the relative importance of any specific choice before us, but then there’s also the kind of criteria we’re looking for. Not only are some desires, goals and standards more abstract than others, but often the available information (and communication) is either lacking or overwhelming. Just as we guess at what the next fitting puzzle piece might look like, so too we guess at how much (and what manner of) resource to spend on guessing in order to be satisfied, content or happy with the results. And while consequentially we’re often just wrong about what is going to work for us, we’re also quite often surprised by just what will work for us – and by what turns out to be more than merely adequate for us.

Heroism

 We live, we learn, we love,   we stand   tall. ~OH

While I think this is one of the best poems I’ve ever written (well, perhaps just my favorite poem right now) despite the cynical heroism portrayed, I know I am no true hero. It is true I have done the first three in this list quite consistently over the years (if not always consistently well, and though they do partially explain my recent hiatus), but if I’ve managed a simple version of standing tall based on other people’s ideas, hopes and standards of ‘tall’, I have rarely (ever?) managed my own idea, hope and standard of ‘tall’.

But just as heroism must be more than the mere accident of being in the (exterior) right place at the (exterior) right time, must be more than merely doing what one is unafraid to do, must be more than merely doing what one is afraid to not do, so too I think true heroism is an internal victory of immeasurable proportion. And if true heroism is conquering that dark space within, I am not a true hero yet (though if true courage is the confronting of one’s interior dark space, I believe I have managed such bravery at times).

Although I have been diligently pursuing (with moderate success and not without cost or setbacks) my plan to place myself at my beloved wife’s disposal, I have recently realized my lack of such true heroism is partly because the victory over my interior darkness, won’t be found on my uxorious path. It’s taken me some time to realize this because I really wanted to find that key in allowing myself to be the uxorious person I am. (I suspect a great many men really want to find their dark space victory by following the uxorious path and a great many men end up feeling deluded, confused and embarrassed.)

It’s been difficult to differentiate, but though I think the uxorious path with my wife and the confrontation of my inner dark place are related in some ways, they are separate and will always be separate, in a most important and fundamental way. Though I am what I am (uxorious) and I may take seriously as a life lesson doing what my wife wants and what makes her as happy, though I may choose to acquiesce, choose willingly to do what she wants, choose her as a part of my life parameters as a symbol and expression of my love, it is and will always be just that – my lesson, my symbol, my choice, my life, my love, my standing tall. Though she participates, I will always be me (just as though I may participate in her process and happiness, she will always be she).

Looking within her and our relationship for help in fighting my daily battle and facing that interior darkness is a good thing and an expected intimacy. Looking within her and our relationship for final answers and for any ultimate victory, whether in my own daily battle or to that dark place within, is not only a bad thing but just untenable. Just as everyone has their own burdens to bear, so to does everyone stand and fight in their own (interior) battle, confront their own interior selves; I may get help, but no can ‘be me’ well enough to fight my battle for me. I am me and only I can do, must do, what I am here to do.