Decisions, Decisions

I'm running errands.
Nothing heroic.
Nothing urgent.

The kind of lazy Sunday afternoon where the mind wanders more than the car does. I’m driving without thinking much about driving—letting muscle memory do its thing—when I stop at a red light. Next to me, a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon idles patiently.

What catches my eye isn’t the Jeep. It’s the lettering.

RUBICON.

All caps. Clean. Intentional.

Rubicon.
The river.
Julius Caesar.

History has a way of hiding in plain sight like that. A word stamped on the side of a vehicle. A moment that once separated before from after.

According to the old accounts, once Caesar crossed that river, there was no undo button.

The die was cast.
No reverse.
No casual re-routing.

For Caesar, that was a big decision.

Sometimes that's the thing about big decisions—we only recognize them as big when we’re safely past them.

Most decisions in life aren’t like that.
Most are small.
Mundane.
Practical.

What to buy at the store.
Which turn to take.
Whether to answer now or later.

We make them quickly. Almost carelessly. Most aren’t life or death. Most can be changed. Revisited. Reversed. Or quietly forgotten.

And yet.

Later—much later—we look back and notice a faint trail. A breadcrumb path of minor choices that somehow added up to a direction. A life. A posture. A set of habits that look suspiciously like destiny.

Or maybe not.

Hindsight has a funny way of turning coincidence into narrative. Twenty-twenty vision, they say. It’s easier to draw straight lines looking backward than it ever is while you’re standing in the middle of the road, squinting into the sun.

Some of the biggest decisions in my life didn’t feel big at all when I made them. No drama. No swelling music. No sense of crossing anything irreversible. Just another day. Another choice. Another red light turning green.

Only later did their weight become visible.

Oh well.

Just a Jeep at a stoplight.
Just a word in uppercase.
Just some lazy Sunday thoughts drifting by.

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Aaron Rose is a software engineer and technology writer at tech-reader.blog and aaronrose.blog.