Louis Roney: Decisions, decisions

Most of the people to whom most people pay the most money are the people who make most of their big decisions for them.

What if your doctor was to ask you this: “Jim, do you think we should operate on you at 6 on Friday, or depend on a guarded systemic approach? I’ll be resting in nurse Lamour’s room while you decide.”

Imagine that your broker emerges from hiding following a few down-days on the Dow, and phones you: “What do think we should do next, Jim? ” he asks! Then you turn to your secretary and say “Dottie, that guy you’re going with: Marry him if he’s rich and he’s good to his mother, and you love him. But be sure he proposes twice so you know that he’s really made the decision!”

In 1890, the great Harvard College philosopher, William James, wrote, “There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.”

A person who cannot make decisions has condemned himself to be a dissatisfied, Earth-bound bird who can no longer soar because one wing is eternally bound to his side.

A Turkish proverb warns in poetic caveat that indecision can cost you your soul: “He became an infidel while hesitating between two mosques.” The renowned English poet, William Wordsworth, believed that his life’s purpose was pre-ordained. He wrote, “I made no vows, but vows were made for me.”

Lots of other people who know the feeling of having a “calling” on Earth, may feel that their lives’ primary decisions were somehow predestined.

Robert Frost, the crotchety New England poet who died shortly after he recited one of his poems at John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, was never able to think in such comforting terms. Frost was tortured by bitter curiosity as to the decisions he had made in his art and in his personal life.

He wrote in “The Road Not Taken,” “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.” To the end of his days, Frost, whom I knew slightly when he was living in our house at Harvard, wondered what his life would have been had he taken the other turn at that unidentified, but decisive, fork in his life’s road.

In the years when I lived in Munich and sang in German opera companies, I could never drive through the beautiful König Platz where the Amerika Haus stands without conjuring up visions of what took place in that handsome building the last couple of days in September of 1938.

The very word “Munich” became synonymous with “appeasement.” And the name of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain came to symbolize the fatal weakness of indecision.

Hitler was bullying and determined on his evil course.

However, most historians now agree that a firm decision by Chamberlain to stop the German dictator in the Amerika Haus would have worked then and there.

If Winston Churchill, a man of decision, had been Prime Minister then, as he was after Chamberlain stepped down, many believe that Hitler, a notorious bluffer, would have met more than his match. World War II might well have been averted by one man’s decisiveness.

In being decisive we all make mistakes. We hope our mistakes are small ones, and are rectifiable. Most usually are.

But being indecisive guarantees failure — failure compounded by a brand of mental cowardice that comes from not “facing the issue squarely.”

How often do you wish to “eat out” with your Aunt Tilly, the one who reads the menu for a half-hour, calls the waiter to the table three times for questioning, and then orders a plain omelet and a salad?

I have always respected Billy Graham, whose approach is based upon a “decision” each must make for himself.

I’ll buy that!