It's all in the choosing...

"What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don’t be frightened: You can always change your mind."
- Nora Ephron

we have the freedom to choose. i have the freedom to choose.  it comes with being a human, i suppose with being an American, and mostly it comes with being an adult.  and as we learn at a young age, with freedom comes great responsibility, so in our free-ness to choose, we are stuck being responsible for our choices.

sounds good, doesn't it?

lately, choosing feels less like a freedom and more like an obligation. i am tired of choosing.  i wish i could hire someone to choose for me, or i wish i could choose without fear of impending doom, as if i could possibly be messing everything up.

sometimes choosing feels so far outside of my control and the choices just come out and i'm left standing there wondering how or why it happened the way it did.

and more often than not, i am learning that choosing hurts.  it hurts to choose and be told "no."  it hurts to say yes, and be rejected.  it hurts to say "no," when you really want to say yes, but know that it is best not to, even though you desperately do, want to say yes.  it's painful. so, what to do we do with this freedom of choice?

i love what tom hank's character (Sam Baldwin) says in "Sleepless in Seattle" when he ends up on a radio chat with Dr. Marcia Fieldstone.  She asks him "People who truly loved once are far more likely to love again. Sam, do you think there's someone out there you could love as much as your wife? And he replies, Well, Dr. Marcia Fieldstone, that's hard to imagine.  So she asks, What are you going to do? and his reply is just so grand...and all about the choosing.

Well, I'm gonna get out of bed every morning... breathe in and out all day long. Then, after a while I won't have to remind myself to get out of bed every morning and breathe in and out... and, then after a while, I won't have to think about how I had it great and perfect for a while.

i just love the response.  it's so real, so down to earth, so honest, and so true to how i think many of us often feel.  because sometimes it feels as though we are all on a trajectory that cuts through grief, loss, sadness, then shoots us back to hope, joy, and then we head down that boomerang of a path, yet again.

so, i suppose the art of choosing is found too in accepting the consequences of our choices, good and bad.  even when in the choosing it doesn't really feel like we had a choice.  and then surrendering to the fact that it is not always our choice or choosing.  sometimes things just happen and that too can be a surprising delight or bring about deep harrowing sadness. but in that we have to choose to let go, to give in, to heal, to walk through the pain, to share, to hide out, and then ultimately to hope again.