Isn’t it ironical that the things you’ve chased after end up in your lap when you least expect (or even want) them? I guess it’s something about trying too hard. Trying to force a square peg and all. Sometimes, you just have to ease off, sit back and wait for it. And prepare yourself. Because though you may think you know what you want, when the moment of truth arrives you are never ready.
Make any sense? Or do I just sound like Meredith Gray soliloquizing?
OK, I’ll just carry on in the faith that you’re still going along with me on this surmise. Decisions are never easy. Whether it means choosing the chocolate chip ice cream over the cranberry cheesecake one or moving to another country, they are all still choices to be made. I would have said that some choices are more important than others, but that would be wrong. Certainly, some decisions are more life-changing then others, but their importance is relative to the decision-maker. A connoisseur of food might actually worry more about a call between chives and parsley in his eggs than popping the question to his girlfriend. It’s just people and what makes them tick.
Most of the significant decisions that I’ve had to take over the years (and I don’t mean ice cream and the like) have all been the regular ones that everyone takes like a rite of passage. Which college to go to? What to major in? Look for a job or keep studying? This job or that? Should I get married to this person? Should I change careers? Do I leave or stay? As I said, the usual niggling questions that keep you up till the wee hours weighing it all.
As good ol’ Murphy’s Law would have it, these crucial decisions one has to make are usually borne on the wings of tight deadlines. If it can get any more complicated than it already is, it will. You think it’s just something people say in passing but I have really wished (and meant with all my being) that I could see into the future-just a year, even- to see if I did the right thing. Because the choices we make in life put us on an inexorable-and sometimes opportune- path of people and events that we look back on as our Life.
But when I think about real do-or-die choices that some people make every day in their lives- people like doctors, paramedics, firemen, aide volunteers and war journalists- I am humbled and brought low. Those are not decisions I would have the courage to make or live with. I sure wouldn’t want to have to decide to save a child over the mother, or offer to take food and water to starving people in war-ravaged territory. Go hungry to feed my family. These are real decisions taken by real people every day.
Suddenly my terrible decisions-to-make seem so much easier and lighter on the shoulders.
So I suspect with no little trepidation that I have miles to go before I sleep, and there will be a tough calls to make all along the way. Should I have two children or five while the going is good? Should I send them to boarding school? Should I buy a house? Should I take the lucrative job offer that will leave me with less time with the family? Should I take a sabbatical? Should I send my parents away to a retirement home? (I hope they’re not reading this.)
I hope and pray that these are indeed the only kind of tough decisions I will have to make in my lifetime.
