Just give me the one you would buy

In an electronics shop in Mansoura, two customers are buying the same kind of laptop on the same afternoon.

The first has a page of notes. She wants to know about the ports, the battery, the weight, the screen in daylight. She asks to see three models side by side and decides herself, slowly, with the salesman mostly standing back.

The second puts his hands up before the salesman begins. He does not want to know. Which one would you buy? That one. Done.

Neither is doing it wrong. They simply want different amounts of the wheel.

What is easy to miss is how much that varies inside one person. The man who waved away every specification may plan his children's schooling to the week. The woman with the notes may happily let her sister choose where the family eats every Friday. Most of us want to steer some parts of our lives and would much rather be carried through others.

Some of it seems to come with us. A lot of it is taught. Families decide who is allowed to choose, and so do workplaces, and so do older habits about whose opinion counts. A person raised never to be asked can take years to discover they like deciding. A person who always had to decide can find it a relief to be told.

Which is why the preference is not entirely fixed. It moves when we practise it.

Taking more control usually costs something, and so does giving it up. But where we want to hold the wheel, and where we are glad to hand it over, is one of the few things nobody else gets to decide for us.