By: Bruce Levine

Jeffrey sat at his computer and wondered what he should do next. He’d caught up on everything that needed catching up on and now it seemed that the only thing to do was take a nap. The problem with that was that he simply wasn’t tired – he’d only gotten up two-and-a-half hours ago after a good night’s sleep.

He looked out the window – the day had turned gray, as predicted. Actually, he was a little surprised that it was changing so early since, when he’d taken his dog out a couple of hours before it was lovely out. The weather forecast had said rain later in the day and into tomorrow. It didn’t matter, it was gray, cloudy, windy, and overcast – not a day one would want to go out and do anything for pleasure.

Yesterday had been beautiful and he and his wife had had a lovely time yard-saleing and simply enjoying the sunshine and warmth, so warm that, for the first time that winter-spring they’d taken off their coats in favor of shirtsleeves.

The winter had been reasonably mild, mild that is in terms of snowfall, but there had been periods of extreme cold and while Jeffrey and his wife preferred the cold to hot, they both were feeling that it was time for spring to take over and warm the place up a bit. The weather-forecasters all said that the temperature was seasonable – whatever that really meant. Jeffrey guessed that it all depended on what one considered seasonable. For Jeffrey anything over about sixty degrees or so was pushing on starting to be too hot – okay, he was okay with up to the low seventies, but that was as far as he was prepared to go. He actually hated the hot of summer. And if one asked which his favorite season was, he’d answer, without hesitation – fall!

All of this didn’t solve Jeffrey’s problem – what should he do today?

His wife had her own work to do so, between the weather and her finishing her projects that eliminated going anywhere or doing anything out of their apartment.

He looked over at his wife, busily working, and smiled. Then he looked back at his computer, around their library/study and, again, thought about his choices: take a nap, read, walk the dog, or…

That was it, he realized. The reason he couldn’t figure out what to do was simple – he was hungry.

Perfect – he’d have breakfast, and, on a full stomach, he was sure that his predicament would be solved for him – it was simply a matter of putting food in the machine and the engine would start.

Enough wondering and procrastinating – it was off to the kitchen.

Of course, now he had to decide what to eat.

Jeffrey’s dilemmas seemed to be multiplying and now this new one added to his perplexity. Not a problem, he thought – I’ll simply open the refrigerator and take out whatever he saw first.

That decided, Jeffrey asked his wife if she wanted breakfast. Her positive response meant that they now went to the kitchen together. And since his wife would offer him a series of choices to eat all he had to do was choose among them.

Jeffrey realized that his life was now a series of choices and, if he allowed it to happen, he would get caught in a maze, so he simply answered that he’d have whatever she felt like having.

Jeffrey smiled again – at least his immediate problem was solved, and he could stop wondering about what to do, at least for a while.