Make up your mind...

Recently this expression has caught my attention. Is it "make up" as in invent, as in "to make up a story?" or is it "make up" as in assemble, tidy, make presentable, orderly as in "make up your face" or "make up your bed?" Probably some of both. The act of deciding is really about applying a small psychic cookie cutter to all the chaos of the universe, pressing down, scraping all the excess dough away, and committing to the resulting cookie as if it were reality. Amazing how that works. Of course, making a decision is something we're not really hardwired to do as humans. We have our systems, our metrics, our rules of thumb, our best guesses, but since making a decision is really a lot like trying to predict the future, making the "right" choice is never easy (and hardly ever measurable). Good decision-makers are essentially good actors. Good self-hypnotizers with a knack for divining consequences.

(Mazehead image by István Orosz)