There are many very good pieces, courses, posts about how to make decisions, especially personal decisions. Make decision trees, think about goals and values, keep a diary, write down the pros and cons….many great ideas. Here is mine. Make soup after a walk.
Those thoughts rummaging around in the dark bits of the back of your head need to be unfolded and examined before folding them properly and putting them on the right shelves nearer the front. Leave the house, wander around and stumble across a path you hadn’t noticed before that cuts behind the castle and passes some sheep, a heron and some lovely hedgerows. Or for the more urban of you, a path that climbs up past that estate and takes you to the old school buildings and the park where there are herbs growing wild and unexpectedly in between the planned and planted trees and hydrangeas.
Let your legs do the thinking, pacing through unknown points of light and striding away from doubts and those niggly hesitancies and feelings of responsibility that cloud over, rain on and obscure the path . Don’t slip! Stride carefully, avoid those muddy puddles, emerge into the sunshine where the path is clean, the earth smells good, and the way forward is more visible. There are still overhanging branches and a few potholes but away ahead, if you squint a bit, you can see the horizon.
Go home. Choose your best pot. Select your vegetables. Admire the assortment on the bench in front of you. Smell them, consider a spice, wash your produce. And then CHOP! Dice, chop, dice some more, watch the veg become something else, little pieces of deliciousness and health, notice how those big old pieces of grubby veg are turning into nuggets of delight. Pile them into the bowl, feel the satisfaction of a job well done.
Steam your stock with your herbs, the scent will uplift you. Breathe it in. Stir your lovely vegetables into the butter and olive oil, watch as they start to shine, listen to the crackle as they fry, revel in the scent of nourishment. You only have to add the stock and seasonings and sit back. And magically, while you are doing this, those untidy unfolded thoughts that had started to behave themselves while you were out straighten out and tidy up. Stir…that’s one tatty idea put to bed. Taste…there goes another. Add onion salt…another thought sits up and straightens his tie. All these ideas, thoughts, feelings, turmoils, promises coagulate under that old fella Integrity and alongside the slightly less glamorous but equally important and beautiful The Right Thing and take a shape that you will recognise. Then along comes your best friend Imagination to wrap around the package and hold it all together so you can fold it, smooth it, cuddle it and put it on the right shelf where it is accessible, visible and righteous.
And boom. Your legs, the vegetables, the herbs, the chopping and stirring have marshalled all those fragments of ideas and thoughts into entire whole living organic outcomes. Plus, you have delicious soup. What’s not to like?
And now I am off to eat my mildly spiced celery, red onion and spinach soup. Bon appetit.