A proverbial line in the sand, twists and bends a rubber band, ideals and morals stretching and straining until it snaps. You, there now, wondering what to accept. Everything you hope, along with anything you don’t blurred. No tears, not that you will admit, still the vision is not clear. Where you are, what can you see? It can only be uncertainty.
Within our dead wisdom and cluttered minds boundaries are defined, so we can know who to allow into our lives, or how far we will let them go before we say no. Always within the shadow of the question, exorbitant explanations were true before, but now? Was it not evermore? What we don’t see cannot hurt us, still the pain resonates. It can. And will.
Have you forsaken those with a powerful presence for fear you will be crushed? Are you not strong enough? You won’t know until you try. Do you compromise your self for a quick rush, to see how it feels, did you like where it touched? A temporary crutch? Promises may have been illusions, or may have been true. Grieving dreams, you second-guess the honesty, a reply to which you won’t believe.
Is darkness looming at the door, or is it light? It’s been there before, and the vices chosen to medicate and the thoughts once used to meditate don’t take away what is there. You look both ways, crossing a road travelled many times before. Will you open up the sturdy door? Or question how you will, or did, or can have the courage to ask. With more trials than tasks, what will you accept?
I can’t be the only one who notices the stray flashes from car headlights, shadows, and shifting colours of traffic lights mirrored in the morning’s gentle rain. Can we think of another way to describe time — the moments we live – as it routinely happens, as it so often does, and we pay such little attention to sidewalk snow as it melts, obscure reflections in storefront windows, a continual din of morning traffic or children making their way to school. Do we notice parents seemingly focused more on take-away coffee? Observations. Baseball caps and yoga mats, packsacks stuffed with what is required to make it through the day, this procession moves forward (as do I) of little consequence with the canopy of night shape-shifting into reality. A yappy attention-seeking puppy breaks up the minutes and seconds that have passed without notice. The animal barks like nobody is paying attention. I am.
What will I do today? This week? Each day I ask this, of myself. I ask this of others; daily, hourly . . . each second of every minute I ask questions, and with each question comes a decision. We all make decisions all the time. Continually. Where to go, what to do, what to buy, whether to stay, what to say, how to say it, how to ask a question. ????? All decisions.
Each and every act, goal, accomplishment or failure, begins with a decision.
How can I be sure the decisions I make are right, or proper, or ethical . . . even moral? I can’t. I can try. I can leverage all my knowledge and experience, and hope, and plan, but even then I can’t be sure the decisions I make, at that time, are correct.
I am like everybody else. We all struggle with decisions. Many, or even most, of the decisions we make involve someone else. In fact, many of the decisions we make must function, or cooperate, or align, with decisions made by others. And that is hard. Even the simple decisions we must make are hard. Every decision is one of hundreds of inter-connected, though seemingly unrelated, decisions made each day.
Life is a cumulative series of decisions.
Your decisions impact the lives of those around you; those you love or those who, just by their nature of being where they are or what they are, are just there. Every day. Every day we make decisions. You decide how you will be viewed, how you will be remembered, how you will be accepted, or how you will accept others. All decisions.
We wake and walk upon each decision we make.
Some, in fact most, decisions are irreversible; resolution is not even in your hands. And the decisions made by others may possibly be the most difficult decisions to deal with. You are forced, without having to decide, to deal with the consequences you had never intended. One decision leads to another, and there is always the danger of collateral damage. And if we don’t question the decisions made by others, we wonder: why they did that; why they said that; why they left, or let you go? All are questions fuelled by decisions, and decisions made without your input. Mainly decisions made with little care or without concern for you. Then again it’s not the actual decision that hurts, as much as it’s how you react to the decision. If you don’t react properly, there is certain to be conflict. Decisions can lead to arguments, as much as agreement, or conclusion, or worry . . .
Without decisions we do little, or nothing, to contribute to this grand parade we call life. Think about it. There, right there, that’s a decision; you have to decide how you will think about it and what you will think about. What will you think? What choice will you make?
If you don’t make a choice, you are leaving it up to a chance, or fate. Kismet. And taking a chance is nowhere near effective as making a decision. It might be easier, at the time, but really it’s not. Not at all. When we make the decision to leave it up in the air — to leave it to chance — that in itself is a decision; not one to be taken lightly, and one that can only lead to indecision.
Indecision can kill you, if not physically then morally, or spiritually. Just as the wrong decision, or even the right decision at the wrong time, can take its toll on how life should, or could, be lived.
With decision comes responsibility. We own each decision we make, and every mistake made. Spur-of-the-moment decisions often haunt us the longest. So how do you make the right decision, without worry, without regret? I suppose, above all else, it’s a matter of being flexible, and even more so, being fair. If you are making a decision it should be made in fairness, and with intention. And it should be made for all the reasons that are good and whole, and right. Not just right for you, but those you care about. Think about it. Ask yourself: What do I want . . . what do I really want? Or, is what I have what I really want?
