Advice For Myself: It's Only Lunch

Oftentimes, I find myself at home for lunch. Sometimes the matter of what to have for lunch is a no brainer. I'll have leftovers from the night before. It's already been planned. I'll have this for lunch tomorrow I’ll think while eating dinner.

Then there are the other times.

I have no prepared leftovers. But there are a myriad of other healthy options. I could make tuna salad or egg salad. I could have a ham sandwich. I could make a cheese omelet with feta or cheddar. I could have a tossed green salad inspired by a Greek salad but not slavishly so.

I could have any number of options on an open-faced sandwich, a closed sandwich, or a bed of greens. I could have a baked potato with fixins’. I could have an Amy's Frozen meal.

I could fashion last night's chicken breast into a gourmet chicken salad. Or I could simply heat it up and have it just as I prepared it.

I decide against pasta salad because it will take too long. I decide against scrambled eggs because I had that yesterday. I'm saving the hummus and the avocado for something else. Bagels with cream cheese and lox or peanut butter on whole-wheat toast beckon.

I think you probably get the idea by now.

This type of back and forth will eventually start to announce itself to me. I will recognize it for what it is. I have spent between two and five minutes contemplating lunch. I will not have spent 10 minutes on my lunch menu because I've never been at it that long before catching myself and giving me some much needed advice.

It's only lunch.

Once I say it's only lunch I switch gears. I pick something and have it. I realize how lucky I am to have plenty of food in the house and choices. Not everyone has this. I realize that this is not my last meal. There will be lots of other lunches.

I realize that what I don't choose today I can have tomorrow. I realize I should be saving my mental energy for more important matters. There are decisions that merit contemplation. Lunch is not one of them.

I've taken this advice from myself so many times that I don't usually need the reminder. I'll just give myself the advice at the beginning of the lunch preparations.

It's only lunch is a construct that can be applied to a great number of things. It's only shoes. It's only eye shadow. It's only a diner menu. It's only an evening out. It's only a throw pillow.

It helps with the bigger decisions too. Decisions with farther reaching consequences. I've done my research and doing more research would have diminishing returns. After being thoughtful and thorough I decide and then see what happens. If it doesn't work out, I'll have more decisions available at that time.

There a few things in life where there is one crystal clear path that is perfect. There is usually more than one good option. There are forks in the road. The dead ends are few and far between.

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One Of These Psychoanalysts Cannot Be Wrong

I made my way from Park Slope Brooklyn to the Upper West Side of Manhattan for my therapy appointment. As I settled into the comfortable chair facing my therapist, I got started on my topic for the day. Jeremy and I were seriously contemplating a move from Park Slope to the Inwood section of upper Manhattan.

After a bit of one-sided discourse, my therapist cleared his throat. I don't usually like to do this, he said. But I feel I would be remiss if I didn't say something. I think it could be a mistake for you to move to Inwood.

This definitely got my attention. The therapist was psychoanalytically trained, and for a young guy, rather orthodox. I was not used to receiving direct, immediately implementable advice from him. Our work together was more amorphous and long range.

Because of the rarity of the situation, I decided to strike while the iron was hot. I was aware that this was a potentially exciting development because the therapist was going off script. Naturally, I asked him to elaborate.

He went into several reasons why he was more comfortable with Park Slope than Inwood. He was also more comfortable with many neighborhoods that were not Park Slope and also not Inwood. He listed some of these neighborhoods.

I just think Inwood could be dangerous, I remember him saying.

As I left my session for the day, I put his thinking into the hopper. I wasn't going to rule out a move to Inwood based on what he said. I also wasn't going to dig in my heels and not listen to him. I was going to think about it some more.

Not far from where I was on the Upper West Side, Jeremy was also meeting with his therapist. This guy was also psychoanalytically trained. He was in fact recommended to Jeremy by my therapist.

If you compared the two of them, Jeremy's therapist was somewhat looser than mine. He could be a bit more direct. However, he was still not fond of outright telling Jeremy what to do. The general idea was for him and Jeremy to talk and then for Jeremy to generate good ideas on his own.

At dinner that night, I told Jeremy what happened at therapy that day. Jeremy found this very interesting because of what happened at therapy with him.

I don't like to tell you what to do, Jeremy's therapist said. But I think that if you don't take this opportunity to move to Inwood, it could be a big mistake. He went into all kinds of reasons why he thought that moving to Inwood was the best option.

During the conversation, Jeremy shared that he would miss riding his bike in Prospect Park if we moved to Inwood. At that point, his therapist became even more opinionated. I don't want to see you pass up what is clearly a great opportunity over bike riding, he said.

Jeremy and I discussed it further over the next several days. We talked it over a bit more with our therapists. We each told our own therapist what the other one said. Both of them found this very interesting. Even my rather serious therapist had to admit that the whole thing was funny.

We also consulted with family members and got more information. Jeremy's mom was especially helpful. Once we ultimately decided to move to Inwood, she coached us through the bidding process on the apartment.

It's been 16 years since moving to Inwood. If this decision were like most things in life, I would say that moving to Inwood has been good, but not perfect, and that each therapist was correct in their own way.

But it appears that this decision did not turn out like most. Moving to Inwood was not a mixed bag. Moving to Inwood was clearly a great idea. It has only gotten better the longer we've lived here.

So in this one case, Jeremy's therapist turned out to be right and my therapist was wrong. It turns out that my therapist was more helpful when it came to how to live, but not necessarily about where to live.

The title of this blog piece pays homage to the song One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong by Leonard Cohen. It is one of my all time favorite songs.