Funny Mental Insights: 25: Talking To Be Prefered Over Coin Flipping

Prompt #25 was to write about a difficult decision. More autobiography. Bleh. Tomorrow's is to talk about an easy decsion. Bleh.

After I got my doctorate degree, I interviewed for a teaching position at a small college. The job was teaching freshmen and sophomores in support of other departments. They had no physics department at the time. Shortly after the interview, I was offered the job.

At the time, I was also pursuing a job with a research laboratory. That job paid better, at least in principle. While I thought my chances at the lab job were good, I had not yet been offered the job.

I liked teaching, but I didn't want to give up research yet. The lab job paid better, but it wasn't a sure thing.

Here's what I did: I talked and I carefully listened.

I talked with my new wife Christie, and I put my intention to listen to her. We were (are) married, and that meant my decisions were as much hers as mine, and her decisions were as much mine as hers. It was important that we make a decision like this together. I've also found that I make better decsions when I talk with Christie about them. (I noticed that long before we were married.)

I also talked with God. That is, I prayed. I've discovered that our relationship is better when I put for the effort to share my thoughts with God, and to listen carefully to God's response. Often God is silent. While that isn't my wish, I recognize that I cannot compel God. Maybe I'll get the chance to write about prayer later, but for this post, I think that's enough.

What I wish I'd done is gotten a little perspective. The fact is, that while my life would have been quite different had I chose differently, neither option was really bad, and I would probably have been really happy if I'd taken the other path. That's what made the choice difficult, but it should also have taken some of the pressure off.

I took the job at the research laboratory. It worked out well.

This work by Timothy H. Ruppel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.