As I was walking home tonight, in spite of my best attempts, my mind started wandering unbidden to various things, among which was wondering how much the 50 yuan I put in for dinner tonight might have differed one way or another from what I owed. I was imagining that I put in more money than my portion. Now looking at the situation objectively, feeling angry or resentful about this fact would be patently ridiculous, due to:
- the sum of money involved
- the number of things that jason and amy have done for zhuoma and I, monetarily and not
And it really didn't anger me or frustrate me or make me feel resentful. But I did start to wonder why the thought came around and interrupted my inner peace.
Now there's at least two ways of looking at it. In one way, I should have tried to pull myself into the moment -- feel my feet as they hit the ground, feel the air around me, feel my breating. And ideally, I guess, I'll get to the point where doing that's just automatic. Or continuous.
But what actually came to my mind was the idea that my indecision caused my distress -- had I made a more conscious decision to put down a certain amount of money ahead of time (say a decision to pay for *ALL* of the meal for everyone), it probably would have been out of my mind forever. As it was, I just threw in 50 yuan and wasn't sure what was going to happen -- it might have gotten chucked out, or accepted, or change given, (or even the response: "that's not enough" -- not likely in practice). And since I basically hadn't decided between which of these outcomes I wanted ahead of time, I was leaving my decision up to things not under my control.
Conclusion: Indecision causes distress.
