The tile nobody chose

A family building a house outside Muscat sits down with their contractor and a catalogue of floor tiles. There are hundreds. Every one of them is perfectly fine: level, durable, well finished, in a sensible colour. Not so long ago, finding a decent tile was the hard part. Now the hard part has quietly gone.

So the contractor does what is easiest. He points at the one he laid in his last three houses. It is in stock, it looks clean, nobody will complain. The family, worn out after weeks of decisions about pipes and wiring, nods.

Five years later they walk every day across a floor that nobody in the house ever chose.

This is the bargain good tools now offer almost everyone. Whatever used to take skill, the straight line, the even spacing, the correct grammar, the well-lit photograph, arrives ready-made and correct. That is a gift. It also makes it very easy to skip the part that was always the real job, which is deciding.

When the craft is taken care of, judgment is what is left. This one, or that one, or none of these. The options will keep arriving, polished and plausible, more of them every year. The work is to actually pick, and to stand behind the pick.

Taking the default feels like saving time. Mostly it is handing the decision to someone who did not care about it, and then living with the result.

There is a difference between a floor that was installed and a floor you chose. Guests may never notice it. The people who live on it will.