Hats, Haircuts, and Tattoos
I heard a wonderful little analogy this morning about making decisions, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it.
The idea is simple. Most decisions in life fall into one of three categories: hats, haircuts, and tattoos.
A hat decision is easy to reverse. You put on a hat. You look in the mirror. You hate it. You take it off. No harm done. Try another one.
What should you have for dinner tonight? Hat.
Should you go to the party Saturday night? Hat.
Should you try the strange thing on the menu you’ve never eaten before? Hat.
Should you spend a long weekend in a city you’ve never visited? Hat.
You make the decision, see what happens, and change course if you don’t like the result.
Then there are haircut decisions.
A haircut involves a little more commitment. You sit in the chair. Somebody starts cutting. At some point, there is no yelling, “WAIT!” and putting the hair back on your head.
You live with the result for a while.
But hair grows.
Six or eight weeks later, the terrible haircut that briefly seemed like a personal tragedy has become a funny photograph.
Buying a television? Haircut.
Joining a gym? Haircut.
Signing up for a class? Haircut.
Painting your living room orange because you suddenly decided you’re an orange-wall person? Haircut.
Booking an expensive vacation? Haircut.
Even taking on a project that ends up being completely wrong for you is usually a haircut. You might lose some money, time, or pride. You learn something. Then life keeps moving.
And then we have tattoos.
Tattoo decisions have consequences that stay with us for a long time, sometimes forever. These deserve more thought.
Having major surgery is a tattoo.
Selling a house without another place to live might qualify.
Marrying someone is certainly closer to tattoo territory.
Making a major financial decision involving much of your savings deserves tattoo-level consideration.
These are the choices where slowing down makes sense. Ask questions. Get advice. Sleep on it. Look at what happens five years from now, not only next Tuesday.
The problem is that many of us treat every decision like a tattoo.
And we become paralyzed.
We research the television for three months.
We spend six weeks deciding where to go for vacation.
We agonize over whether to take the class, join the group, accept the invitation, change our hairstyle, buy the ridiculous jacket, go on the date, start the project, or order the damn pasta.
We give hat decisions tattoo-level anxiety.
I suspect this gets worse as we get older.
By this point in life, we know choices have consequences because we’ve lived through plenty of them. We remember the job we shouldn’t have taken. The person we shouldn’t have dated. The house we shouldn’t have bought. The trip we should have taken. The opportunity we talked ourselves out of.
Experience teaches wisdom, but sometimes wisdom puts on a fake mustache and calls itself fear.
We start thinking, “I don’t want to make another mistake.”
Fair enough.
But what if it’s only a hat?
Try it on.
Sunday in the Park with George
All of this immediately made me think about one of my favorite musicals, Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George.
The musical centers on a fictionalized Georges Seurat and his lover, Dot.
Yes, Dot.
(Another Dorothy. I knew there was a reason I loved her.)
The entire musical is filled with choices.
George obsesses over color, light, placement, composition. Blue beside orange. A figure here instead of there. A tiny choice might change the painting, but he gets another dab of paint. Another dot. Another attempt.
Those are hat decisions.
Then there are the haircut decisions. George repeatedly chooses his work over moments with Dot. Each individual afternoon in the studio might seem recoverable. There will be another Sunday. Another conversation. Another opportunity to pay attention.
Until enough little choices accumulate.
That’s the dangerous thing about haircuts. One haircut grows back. But keep making the same haircut decision over and over, and eventually you might find yourself somewhere you never intended to be.
Dot eventually faces the tattoo decision.
She chooses to leave George and travel to America with Louis, a man she does not love the way she loves George.
That choice changes everything.
Her home. Her relationship. Her future. The generations that follow her.
Tattoo.
And still, Sondheim refuses to tell us that every choice must be perfect.
Late in the musical comes “Move On,” and one passage has stayed with me for years:
“I chose, and my world was shaken. So what? The choice may have been mistaken. The choosing was not.”
Then comes the instruction:
“You have to move on.”
I love that.
The goal isn’t to make a life without mistakes.
What a dull life that would require.
The goal is to learn which decisions deserve your fear.
Before you spend another week agonizing over something, ask yourself one question:
Is this a hat, a haircut, or a tattoo?
If it’s a tattoo, take your time.
If it’s a haircut, give the decision the consideration it deserves, then choose.
And if it’s a hat?
For heaven’s sake, put the thing on.
If you hate it, there are plenty more hats.