Choices

1.

Three things I'm glad about:  When I had little kids, mothers (like me) didn't say these phrases to our children:

"You're making bad choices,"

"Use your inside voice"

"Touch with your eyes not with your hands."

If you stand behind a mother with young children in the check-out line, you'll be sure to hear one or all three of these canned-sounding bits of advice. Granted, they are better than "shut up" or  "because I said so," but they have their downsides.

2.

I like watching my choices wither or bloom without labels like "good" and "bad."  They are mine, for all their tangles and thorns--as are the consequences. Isn't that what choices are for--learning to trust ourselves?  As Harriet (Shirley MacClaine) says in The Last Word, "We don't make mistakes; mistakes make us."

When I first began traveling solo after nearly 32 years with one man, I was always asking people. "What should I do?" and "What do you think?"  It was as if my choosing muscles had atrophied and I was terrified that I might do or say the wrong thing. I tried to quash mistakes by seeking foolproof advice from other people.  I wanted to do the right thing, to be approved of--in my decisions about furniture, clothes, travel, money, everything.

I did some things differently than what I'd do today, that's for sure.  But it took all that trying on of different choices to finally hear my own voice starting to speak.  It took a long time to learn to trust myself.

3.

Today I talked to an attractive woman who told me--with no sadness--that she was getting a divorce after twenty years.

"What I want now is to get to know myself.  I've been married twice, twenty years each, and have always been yoked with a man.  I don't even know what I want anymore apart from a man and his opinions.  I don't even know what I want to buy at the grocery store.  Everything goes through the filter of what he wants."

"I'm a Taurus and it takes me way too long to make decisions to end things," she said.

"I'm a Libra," I said.  "Me too."

If you've been yoked too long to the not-right-for-you person, you almost have to return to child-mind to discover what you want.   This woman wants a big tree and Italy and coffee alone on a deck every  morning.

I hope she makes a lot of choices, no labels.  I hope she talks with her outside voice.  And I hope her hands touch a lot of silk and stones and snow (and anything else she's drawn to)  and finds out what she likes and what she doesn't.

She's thinking of living in a tiny house, maybe buying a mobile home, and spending her money not on a house but traveling to all the places on her bucket list, all the places her constantly-TV-watching homebody husband refuses to go. She looks like an excited child about to embark on a happy solo adventure.

4.

I have spent way too much energy this year trying to repair a relationship.  At first, I wanted to go back to the way it was when it was good, but more and more I saw cracks that couldn't be fixed.

I kept thinking of that old country song: "Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away."

Holding is an easy choice until what you're choosing isn't what it used to be, and when all the stretching and pulling in the world can't turn it into a good thing.  Even then, it may take miles of neon signs to announce the obvious to yourself.

Folding and walking away are harder--for Libras and Tauruses and other stubborn lovers of harmony.

Having finally made a choice to admit it's time to fold,  I notice that other good things are showing up and I now have all this freed-up energy to pay attention and explore new things.  Actually, I feel like a child about to embark on another invigorating chapter myself.  (I'm saying this with my happy outside voice.)