We hang suspended from the heights until it's safer to walk here

I'm part of a large community of people who have a horrible time making decisions. I like to call us Coin Flippers. When we get together, we're the kind of people who find ourselves driving aimlessly around town, passing restaurant after restaurant while we fail to come to a consensus on where to eat. We're also probably the reason that the jury system occasionally fails.

It's unfair to lump all CFers into one homogeneous category, though. We're motivated (or rather unmotivated) by different things. A lot of CFers are plagued by pure indifference. They can't decide anything because they just don't care that much. Whether they choose one thing or the other, it's all the same shade of gray to them. They tend to shrug a lot.

There's a distinct difference between these apathetic CFers and those in the category to which I belong: the indecisive. If the first group doesn't care enough, then my group cares way too much. Opinions build up like back taxes in my mind when a question is posed, including not only what I think but also everything I've ever read, seen, or heard on the subject. In any choice, under any circumstance, there's usually a complex (if trivial) list of pros and cons that weigh into each side, clouding the decision-making process. Belabored by the potential positives and negatives of each prospective future, I'm left at a standstill, hesitant to commit to anything.

On a day-to-day basis, indecisive CFers can be irritating, if not to ourselves then to our friends and family members left checking their watches while we selfishly deliberate. You're constantly attempting to find a Best Choice in a world where Well I Mean This Sounds Okay is really all you need, and you lose a lot of valuable time hemming and hawing while other people are already done, showered, and paring their fingernails.

As a character trait, though, I like to think that being aware (and sometimes overwhelmed) by the many-sided nature of things is a positive quality. Taking everything into painstaking consideration means you usually avoid being short-, over-, blind-, or near-sighted on an issue. While you might get disdainful glances from people when you refuse to unqualifiedly ally yourself to an opinion or cause, it's also much harder for other people to label you as closed-minded or hypocritical.

This whole train of thought, oddly enough, was inspired the other day when I saw a friend's post on my facebook homepage. She was describing how, on Independence Day, a young family member had asked what a veteran was, and, in accordance with her principles, she answered with something along the lines of "a former perpetrator of dominating imperialist aggression."

I'd never say something like that, I thought. My friend and I share many of the same values and personality traits, but her statement is, to me, is a perfect example of someone who (unlike me) does not have a constitutional tendency towards indecision. Even if I have liberal tendencies and might agree that war is usually a product of national bullying, an indecisive CFer like myself would never ally so strongly to that opinion that I would make a statement like hers, which denies the other factors that go into making someone into a veteran: honor, nationalism, duty, guilt, family legacy, conscription, poverty, propagandist manipulation, etc.

In all fairness, though, if the U.S. government ever started drafting women, my friend would likely know exactly what she would do: expatriate and flee. She'd be in Nova Scotia before I'd have even finished my pro/con list.