On Making Hard Decisions
As kids, we want the power to make decisions.
The decision to stay up past our bedtime.
The decision to see what lies beyond the neighbor’s fence.
The decision to leave home, even if just for a day.
As adults, we have that power.
This is both a gift and a curse.
As adults, we are free to make our own decisions.
As adults, we learn that decisions have consequences.
Some consequences hurt oneself,
Like drinking too much and not being able to sleep.
Some consequences hurt others,
Like words said in anger that destroy, in an instant, what has taken a decade to build.
Hard decisions are those that have consequences for the ones we love,
Where there are neither good choices nor certainty in making them.
Like time itself, there will be no going back,
So what do you do when faced with this choice?
There is a trap that one falls in during these times,
It is the one of not making a choice.
This is not a kindness.
It is a slow fading into oblivion.
When we refuse to decide, we choose to enter limbo.
Time stops working - and you and everyone involved are held in its grasp.
Unable to move forward.
Unable to go back.
Like hell, the only way out is through.
You have to make a choice.
Make it based on what you know.
Make it based on who you are.
These decisions often have no good (immediate) outcomes.
It comes down to choosing between different forms of pain.
If you find yourself in this position - choose the pain that you can live with.
Choose the pain that doesn’t kill your soul.
There will be consequences for your choice.
There will be pain.
It can feel like drowning,
Like stepping off a cliff and not knowing what lies beneath.
Don’t escape.
Don’t close up.
Take responsibility for what is yours to own.
Let go of what is not.
Children long for the power to make their own choices.
Adults envy the child that does not need to make them.
But time passes, and we stop being children.
We become adults that live with the consequences of the choices we make.
It is tempting to abdicate our powers,
To pretend that a decision is not ours to make.
But we are no longer children standing at the fence, wondering what lies beyond.
We are already on the other side.