Blame me if it is bad

Six friends in Muscat have been meaning to go walking in the mountains for a month. The group chat is full of suggestions.

There are photos of a dozen wadis. Someone has shared three routes, with distances. Someone else has found a list of fifty walks within two hours of the city, each with its own pictures and reviews. Every few days a new option arrives, and everyone agrees it looks wonderful.

Four weekends have passed. Nobody has gone anywhere.

They would say they have not found the right place yet. That is not true. Half the places in that chat would make a perfectly good Saturday. The supply of good options was never the problem, and it grows every time someone opens a phone.

What nobody has done is choose. Choosing means one of the six might find the walk too long, or the road rough, or the pool dry, and will look at whoever picked it. So everyone keeps adding options, because adding is safe. It feels like helping, and it carries no blame.

Then one evening a friend writes a single message. This wadi, leaving at six on Saturday, my call, blame me if it is bad. Within an hour, five people have said yes.

She did not have a better idea than anyone else. Her wadi had been in the chat for weeks. What she added was the one thing in short supply: a decision, with her name on it, and a time to be outside the door.

Ideas have become the cheapest part of almost anything. The person willing to pick one and answer for it is still rare, and still the reason anything happens.