Paradox of choice

A few years ago I was talking with my friend Rich about how I had so many paths laid out before me, since I was newly divorced, yet had no clue which one I wanted to take. I hadn't figured it out when a man came into my life and became the path I chose.

Today, I find that I face the same paradox - every choice I could ever wish in front of me and that same man offering me a path, waiting for me to choose. Rich had dubbed it the paradox of choice. So many choices - which many people might envy - that you can't choose. You're paralyzed by the paradox.

It's this riddle - which should she choose? which one is 'best,' as my friend's son asked playing the board game Life.

I could move to Europe. Learn French and work for the UN. Move to DC. Move to Seattle and be close to family. Stay in the Tri-Cities. Get married. Stay single. Sometimes, when I'm really confused and stressed and just done with life, I'm tempted with the thought of selling everything and just driving - to who knows where.

So many choices. So much responsibility weighing on each one. A friend once said that because I didn't have children tethered to a father here, I could go anywhere - and therefore, I had an even greater responsibility to myself and to other women to make sure that if I stayed in the Tri-Cities, it was because it was what I truly wanted to do.

So much pressure.

This quote seems appropriate to me at this time: "Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice." -Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It's so ironic, I think. It's like with all freedoms - they don't come easy and they don't come without responsibility.

I certainly don't have the answers. I'm newly paralyzed, looking at all those choices with uncertainty.

Yet doesn't it sound cool to move to Europe or DC or NYC? But I'm not sure I actually want that - being further from my family and from my friends. All that traffic. Why not just travel for work and enjoy it that way? It could make for exciting career opportunities, though. On the flip side, I also didn't grow up wanting three kids, a husband and a house in the suburbs. I wasn't sure what I wanted - except to be happy, since I wasn't having the grandest time as a kid.

So how do we know what we want? How do we know what will nourish our soul? Maybe the only way we find out is to try a path and see - and if it doesn't work, starting laying a new path in a different direction.

Some paths will lead to growth, some will lead to safety (yet shrinking). But which ones?

I should ask the people in my life - how have you made those major decisions? How have you known where the path to nourishment and growth was? When did you know it was the wrong path?

I think it also comes down to what nourishes us - children, family, adventure, new cultures, creative outlets? Because those will help determine whether a path is the right one. If we take a safe path but truly yearn for adventure, it's not the right path.

So many choices. Such a riddle.

Since I don't have answers, maybe I'll find some solace in this thought tonight, also by Kubler-Ross: "Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from."

Got security?

So as I'm rethinking the last six months and what I knew or believed I knew about my last relationship ending - and asking myself if I can make it work a second time around, I have been thinking a lot about trust. In that second chance, how could I trust this person again? How could I trust my own feelings?

How could I have clarity - when I was so 'wrong' the first time?

I even wondered - how could I be as carefree and audacious as I was early in our relationship, when now I don't know if I can trust his feelings? my own feelings? How can I trust that it's authentic and not some romanticized idea in my Harlequin Romance-warped head?

Last week, my younger brother told me not to focus too much on trust and security -- because no one can make any guarantees. And our striving for trust and security can in fact send us on a rollercoaster of insecurity, anxiety and baggage-driven moments.

Anyway, his point was that there is no security in life. I've heard this assertion repeatedly in the Buddhist passages and books I've read the last several months. About how looking for security is a futile effort.


Our only security is within ourselves - and our security grows in direct proportion to how little reassurance we require from sources outside ourselves.


The only way we're ever going to feel secure is when we recognize that security is a childish dream that will never come true - and, when we're okay with that notion, only then will we feel any semblance of security.

I have to admit, that notion sucks - only because it seems so hard to achieve! Isn't that what so many of us are seeking? yearning for? something to make it better, give us ground under our feet? tell us it'll all be OK?


We may not like that idea, and as much as it goes against my romantic girlhood dreams, I really believe it's true. Because I've never found security beyond my own soul. It's a hard reality of life to think that in those ways, it's all up to us - but it's very freeing to believe, at the same time.


If security can't be guaranteed, then we should only expect life to change. To surprise us. To smack us upside the head and rearrange the building blocks of our soul in ways we never anticipated.

So, it's not just death and taxes that are guaranteed. It's the inability to find your security in anyone else that is a given.

The question is - can we trust ourselves enough to be without that security, without that ground under our feet, and then do the hard work to forge our souls to give us all that we need?

Second chances

How do you decide to give someone a second chance? Who has shattered your heart? Who has made you question everything in your life?

That man - the one who loved me better than any other before, who loved me good but not enough - has offered himself to me. A different kind of life together. A new prioritization. One that answers the question "Is it enough."

How do you allow someone back in - if you can, in fact? Do you take that gamble - go 'all in'?

At what point do we offer someone a second chance. This man shattered my heart - shrapnel, as Susan Anderson the author says. I'm still figuring out how to re-create my heart into something stronger.

So when I do trust it? be vulnerable to it? open myself to it? take that gamble?

And when do I close off, knowing that no matter how good it sounds or how amazing that love was, that it won't be enough?

I am such the romantic. I want to believe. I want to trust. But I've cried my way through too many Kleenex boxes and toilet paper rolls in my car to walk into anything blindly. No bluffing in the game of love.

So many people would say - Don't trust it. He hurt you. Don't give him another chance. Fold up those cards and walk away before you lose big.

But there's no 'heart' in that path. There's no risk-taking. That's not being open to love. At least in my case. At least in my heart. From all the soul-searching I've done the past six months, I know I want to take risks. Believe in love. Expand my life.

So I asked myself just one question this week - is the payout worth the risk?

It is. Mostly because it was so good before, that if it can be 'enough' now, then I'll have hit the jackpot.


If it doesn't work out, I'll be hurt again. And I'll kick his butt. But I am strong enough to handle it - stronger than last time. More sure of who I am. Though my girlfriends may demand I pay for their high cell phone bills this time!

I didn't get my storybook happy ending last time with him - there's no guarantee I will this time. But I'm just curious enough and just hopeful enough to believe it's worth the gamble.

I'm all in.