thoughts on choosing

I read today on the BBC News web site that as Kenyans vote on a new draft of their constitution, citizens must choose between the banana (the symbol for "yes") and the orange (which signifies "no"). What a wonderfully simple image of something we must do every day of our lives: make a choice between two exclusives. The banana represents one future for a country, the orange, another.

I am sprawled on my bed before yoga. I am thinking about choices.

Will you take a banana, or an orange, madame?
Neither. I require chocolate-covered strawberries. See it done.

I am actually really eating chocolate-covered strawberries, because my roommate made some. I am savoring their juciness, and thinking that hard as I try, I cannot seem to mold these thoughts about choosing into something sleek and presentable. The thoughts are jagged, and slap against one another. Wave upon wave.

Thought #1: Choosing, I am coming to find, is inherently risky business. I hate it.

Thought #2: However, I am also learning that making decisions is as necessary part of sailing on this gorgeous and terrible sea of faith. In choosing, we learn to respond to what comes our way: riptides, teasing winds, Siren songs etc. In choosing how we respond to obstacles and opportunities, we are most painfully aware of our human frailty. Because even in putting the best we have into choices, we sometimes get slammed, thrown overboard, and come up sputtering salt. At least, I do.

Thought #3: But in choosing -- charting a course -- we find our adventure, find what we are made of, and find our God. Thank you, God, for the chance to use our muscles and minds and hearts, for the chance to stumble out upon stubby, inexperienced land-legs.

Thought #4: While it can feel like I'm risking less by not choosing, I'm often risking a lot more by my inaction. Choice is unavoidable, and failing to choose can be foolish. Dangerous. It's good to be thoughtful and take time in decisions, but life offers such things as "windows of opportunity," and as we mull and muse, the favorable breeze dispels, and is gone.

Thought #5: "Goodbyes" are the hardest choice for me. Well, oftentimes, goodbye is not a choice. But it is in putting limits on friendships that I most acutely feel the weight of the Fall, and that I most often rage against the Way of Things. No, I will not be quiet. No, I will not be silent. The loss of you tears my heart. The thespian in me would like to rend my garments, wander the desert and refuse speech. But there is no desert around here, and the American mourning rituals, or lack thereof, are not big enough for loss. So I just write and go to Starbucks.

Thought #6: It would be nice, wouldn't it, if all our choices boiled down to To Sin or Not to Sin. Most of the ones I wrestle with do not. They are ... should I be in this play? Should I date this person? Should I go to this grad school, God? Should I wear these pink pants with this purple shirt (answer: no, Laura. No! Neutrals are your friends!). Should I eat a banana or an orange?

Thought #7: I possess the unfortuante tendency of evaluating the success of my decision-making processes by result. When things work out my way, I congratulate myself on decisions well-made, even if I was not careful in my choice. Conversely, when I take a risk, and fall on my face, I chastise myself for not selecting the other option, even if I've grown stronger or more honest by making the difficult choice. Perhaps the challenge was, in and of itself, the reward, rather than the prize I sought. When my choices do not yield the results I want, I regard them as bad choices, even if I have made the decision prudently, and with my heart in the right place. The lens of hindsight tints my memory, rosy or gray, with the result that I misremember my story. And, looking back on my failures, I chastize myself for the inability to do the impossible: see the future.

I regard choices not as opportunities to grow, but opportunities to get what I want. And when I don't get what I want, I regard my choosing-ability, and hence, myself, as somehow deficient.

Thought # 9: But this is horrifying, isn't it? Very bleak. Very Ayn-Randy (ecch). Very Pharasaical. ""Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" I see myself as only as good as how much I get what I want.

Thought #10: Perhaps a way to love others radically is to strive to keep our minds large, as the universe is large, in order to see one another's stories, in all their complexity. We are not the sum of our choices. We do not always get what we deserve, or deserve what we get.

Sometimes, we fail so God can sanctify us. Sometimes, trouble does come as a result of bad choices (the Universe contains within it certain laws: don't touch the stove, or you'll get burned. The Bible, while very complicated, contains distillable truth, too -- and we are foolish not to heed it). Sometimes, we fail because who knows why.

God can, and has, taken my sin and fashioned it into something beautiful. And conversely, sometimes when I am living righteously, I am repeatedly thrown against the rocks.

Thought #11: I am tired of my mutinous spirit: putting a pistol to Destiny's head and demanding particular treasures. Perhaps I should try to collaborate more with the Captain.

Okay, I'm done waxing philosophical now (and eating chocolate covered strawberries). Time for yoga with the roommates. A few weeks ago, the yoga teacher went on and on - with a face as inexpressive as a pan of milk - about how Faith is your Lifeguard in the Pool of Life. Now, I wonder if my thoughts and metaphors about, you know, sailing on the sea of life and choosing how you respond to stimuli are as inane and vacuous as that?

When if Someone Pees in the Pool of Life, huh? I wanted to demand. What then? But I chose to stay in child's pose, and, sheltered in the dark cool cave of my own shoulders, to darken an imaginary glass with my hot ujayi breath.