Flipping a coin with friends

We were standing in the kitchen, the conversation looping back on itself. The same two options, the same pros and cons, just getting more tangled. I’d opened the fridge three times without really seeing what was inside.

The weight of a simple choice

Someone finally said it. "Let's just flip for it." There was this collective exhale in the room. It wasn't about being lazy, or not caring. It was about admitting that we'd thought it all into a knot.The fairness of it was the whole point. No one could argue with a coin. It didn't have a favorite, it didn't know our histories or secret preferences. It was just a piece of metal, impartial and quiet.

That moment of suspension

My friend flicked their thumb, and the coin went up. For that second it was spinning, everything else went quiet. All the back-and-forth in my head just stopped. There was nothing to do but watch it turn.It hit the table with a soft clatter, wobbled for a second, and settled. We all leaned in. The outcome itself almost didn't matter in that instant. The decision was just... made.

What we accepted

We went with it. The conversation immediately shifted from "what should we do" to "okay, so how do we make this work." The energy changed completely.

What was left behind

All that mental clutter, the second-guessing, the slight anxiety of picking wrong—it just evaporated. The coin took the blame, or the credit, and we were free from it.