Reflections on Choice
2003-01-15 - 11:24 a.m.

I find my life circles around recurring themes, if not exhibited in my life at the moment then often prevalent in the lives of my friends. I used to think that you learned a lesson and went on but now I know most of my deep-seated issues will be lifelong themes of challenge and change. From those themes, I watch and learn and try to be ready to learn more when next one rolls around.

These days, my mind is recurrently drawn to think about choice and accountability. Sometimes I make the wrong choice either from impulse or lack of reflection. Sometimes I am unaware of the exact circumstances that will arise from my choice making the choice wrong in hindsight. In either case, I then have another choice, whether to accept my personal accountability or to look for mitigation from external factors. . It is so easy to abdicate our personal power to choose, to allow our subconscious to rule or to make excuses external to ourselves. I used to think that people made me do things until I learned that my reaction to anything or anyone was my choice. Yes, sometimes folks can present me with two hard options but ultimately, I still get to choose. I can say �____ made me� or �I forgot� or �I did not mean to� but at the root, I chose.

I was not reared to choose clearly and well. I learned to talk around an issue or to be passively aggressive with my needs so that I could maintain plausible deniability. But for me, that was not where I found growth. I found growth in learning to be internal not external, to be more conscious not subconscious to hold myself accountable to honesty as often as possible. I am learning that I can control some of my responses while I work on the more obscure roots of others.

Then I had to learn to release others to their choices. I am learning to reflect that if my life leads me to my choices that their life is doing the same. I am learning to love and have faith in others without losing love and faith in myself. I am learning hard lessons that everyone cannot be good for me in my life; sometimes their needs are juxtaposed to mine.

As I grow and reflect and try to become more self-aware I have also learned that if I believe in this process I have to stay on this path. It is not solitary. I have been really blessed with folks whose personal paths have intersected with mine and even co-mingled for significant time. Those are really growth times for me when I have been given a travel companion with whom to laugh, cry, reflect and learn. One of the hardest things I am learning is that when our paths diverge again that I have to release them to their path if I can stay on my own. Their path is not wrong but it is theirs not mine. So at every turn and crossroad, it is my responsibility to check to make sure if I am supposed to turn with a friend. Sometimes I realize I am meant to hug them closely and continue on a different path with the hope that our separate paths will be rewarding and that they may even come together again in the future. In that I can reflect on faith, trust and hope.

So all this is in my heart and mind, circling themes and converging then diverging paths. Geometry of the spirit.

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