Are you ready to live with your choices?

Isn’t it funny how we make choices in our life – day in and day out, minute in and minute out, seconds in and seconds out, and we don’t even know it, realize, or understand it. Something as simple as taking the bus, putting on a blue color dress you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing; meeting someone you never knew existed. Well, what if I took a different bus, put on that 5 year old blue dress from my closet, met someone I never knew existed. What then? The main act is done. You are already on the bus; you know that it will take you to wherever you have to go, but through a different route, you only need to decide to stay on it or get off. You have the dress on, you only need to decide whether to keep it on, or take it off. You have already met that person, you either like them or not. Simple isn’t it? I thought so too... until sometime ago.

What struck me during this revelation period of mine was that it is not the choices that we are afraid of. It is ourselves, and our ability (or inability) to choose them that we are most apprehensive about. You might ask what is there to be apprehensive of. Well, let me put it this way; if I decide to take the bus that takes me through the different route, I don’t think I am afraid that I will not get down at my destination (I think I am smart enough to do that), I am more afraid that it is taking me out of my comfort zone of the regular route and has put me in a situation where I need to ‘learn’ again, re-look at things again. If I put up with this, it means that I have to brave anything and everything that this ‘new route’ might throw up. I have the blue dress on. I just need to understand and tell myself it looks good or not; if it does look good, then keep it on, if not take it off and choose to wear something else. But what am I afraid of here? That I just might like the way it fits me, or the fact that I have to hear other’s people’s comments about it not being ‘good for them’. I know that I have to choose whether to like this person I never knew, and who has come into my life. Am I afraid that by choosing to like them, I am admitting to myself that I never was the person I thought I was, or by choosing to not like them, am giving into my fear that I just might like them if I took the trouble.

Someone very close to me said something I will always remember for the rest of my life, and I heard the very same thing again very recently – ‘don’t be afraid’. What pains me the most is that I never ever imagined that I would move on to the coward side of life. Yes, I do admit that I am a coward in certain ways, more so because I would not like to cause myself the undue impact of pain and hardship that comes with making a choice (and more so in knowing that you are making the right one). I would rather live with the bouncers life might throw at you, ‘hoping’ they will turn out right, rather than make a choice and make sure that it does turn out the way I want it to be. Haven’t you done that? Even when you knew that you had to make the choice that was the best for you, you went ahead and chose the other thinking that it is morally, or philosophical or just plain crappy correct. And then what? What did you get then? Less hardship? Less pain? Less crap? I doubt that. Haven’t you noticed that the more you think you are ‘sacrificing’ for someone other than yourself, by making the ‘right’ choice, you are only making it harder for you to accept the fact that you let go of the only thing that could have been yours. Don’t you feel that? I think it is because we are not ready to accept what we have chosen. That’s not classifying into right or wrong, but just plain accepting that it is over and done with. Somehow we never allow closure in our life.

There is however, one thing I think I would always like to be, and uphold in my life. In fact we all can. Whatever it is, whoever it may involve, and whatever it may be; I would never ever be regretful of the choices I ‘do’ make, even when I know that they are not correct. Till this day I feel I have done justice to this value of mine, more so because maybe I ‘choose’ not to be regretful. Of course, there have been instances where I have questioned the choice I made, and that is only natural. But even before we move on to the fact where we choose to make a choice, I want to ask you this - are you ready to live with your choices, whatever they may be? Or are you afraid to make them at all?