Are you familiar with the terms “maximizer” and “satisficer”? I notice that the spellcheck on my website platform has flagged both of those words as being misspelled, but since my hero Gretchen Rubin uses them they must be okay. (She’s not the only one who uses the words, but I believe I got them first from her.) i guess I should define those terms. So a “maximizer” keeps looking and looking for the perfect whatever-it-s, comparing and analyzing and second-guessing. (Some people actually enjoy this process; others are driven crazy by it but feel they have to keep going.)
Satisficers, on the other hand, stop the process of choosing as soon as they are satisfied.
Okay. We’re working on consulting with my in-laws about remodeling their lower level, and the bathroom was the first project since it didn’t have a shower. My father-in-law is going great guns, putting in a really luxurious, fully-tiled, big shower. (As he said, “This is going to be the nicest shower in the house.”) So he and Jan, my dear mother-in-law, had gone to at least three stores and brought home some samples. Jim and I went over on Friday and conferred. There was one sample that was actually quite nice and blended in well with the wall color. But . . . it was a little pale. It wasn’t going to provide much contrast. Lowell said, “There didn’t seem to be anything medium–everything was either light or dark.”
Well! You can’t throw down a challenge like that to me. You want medium? I’ll find it! Although I am often willing to say “enough already!” when pondering choices, there are there are times where I get a bit obsessive, and this was one of those times.
So Jim and I got up Saturday morning and set out for the tile stores. There were three of them–yes, three–all in a row in this sort of outlet center-y place. We went to all three. One was clearly a washout, as everything was very expensive. (And kind of ugly.) One was nicely laid out and the guy left us alone after showing us where everything was. And one . . . well, I don’t know how long we spent there. The saleswoman was nice and friendly, and we were all caught up in the whole process, and then she got the idea that we could take a look in the back where the in-stock discount stuff was, since we said we needed to have it by Monday, and we peered at the piles on the pallets (little bit of alliteration there) and finally picked out something that seemed perfect. It was medium. It was sort of speckledy. And classy. She let us borrow one without having to pay for it (which would have cost all of $1.39). And then we stopped at yet a fourth place on the way over to the in-laws’, which was a complete and total waste of time. (I’m not sure where that comma should go.)
And you know what happened? When we got it in the actual bathroom, propped up against the actual wall, the medium, speckled, classy tile didn’t look very good. I tried to convince myself that it did, that it was perfect, but it wasn’t. So we sorted through all of the samples that Lowell and Jan had already gotten, and guess what? (You know what’s coming here.) That original tile? The one we thought was too pale? Well, it was fine. We propped it against the wall and breathed a sigh of relief. Yes! That’s the one! (Remember that whole “Color Me Beautiful” craze back in the late eighties? It was actually based on a sound idea, which is that every color is either warm or cool, and that includes skin tones. It drives me crazy when people pick out colors that supposedly coordinate but which don’t because their undertones don’t match.)
Well, I said to myself, Jim and I spent the morning together, so the time wasn’t wasted. And we met that interesting woman, and people are always worthwhile. But still . . .
I remember finding the material for my bridesmaids’ dresses back when I was planning my wedding and thinking that it was nice but maybe a little too green. So I drove all the way across town to another store, only to discover that they didn’t have anything I liked nearly as well. I had to then drive back across town to buy the original stuff. And this was when I was in the midst of finishing up my teaching for the school year, and directing the school play, and getting my house ready to sell, and figuring out all of the other stuff for the wedding. I didn’t need to spend two unnecessary hours driving around because I couldn’t recognize that what I had already was the best I could possibly do.
Hmmm. Is there a life lesson here in a broader context? Perhaps so. I’ll leave it to you to figure it out!