I’ve been giving a lot of thought to rituals and choice. We have so much opportunity–especially in U.S. society–to create lives for ourselves. There are barriers to choice to be sure. Not everyone is born with the same opportunity to lift themselves into the life they want. Not everyone is born with the same idea of what a great life will be. The downside of choice is that we are often victims of it as well. Much like I once wrote about politicians being locked into a choice for fear of being considered flip floppers, we are often locked into the choices we make in life–either through the false walls we build for ourselves around those choices or through the very real bindings that come with age, time, and even location.
The other day someone I love told me I was having a mid life crisis, because I had–supposedly abruptly–made a choice that was so far away from what would be normal for me that it had to be that I was in crisis. I am not, of course, in crisis. In truth I’ve spent the last 1600+ days developing a much deeper and nuanced understanding of myself and my needs (writing will do that to a person. It is definitely worth the 10 minutes). Still, the walls of responsibility make every new choices a hard one and might not always stand up to the trials of time and experience.
I write this to suggest, however vaguely, that we are all subject to the choices we make and that we are all human creatures who learn and grow and change and sometimes act maturely and sometimes not and sometimes change our minds. It doesn’t make us villains. It doesn’t mean we are worse or better people for it. It does mean that we learn and we grow and we admit that we don’t have all the answers and we don’t ever have all the information and that the world changes and changes us and the results of that can shape new understanding and new beginnings and new rituals.
Twenty years ago I was a 175 lb kid who’d just messed up his knee and learned that the life he’d planned for himself over the last 10 years was over. He–I–didn’t have what it took to be that guy. Perhaps the seeds of that failure were sewn long before. Perhaps it was never something meant to be. We cannot ignore the fact that the universe has a way of leading us in the right direction if we just stop and listen.
Twenty years passed and I’m a lot older and maybe a hair or two wiser than that cocksure kid was the hour before his world fell apart. Twenty years, fifty pounds, and a lot of scars later I’m firmly aware of what makes me happy, motivated, and healthy, and what doesn’t. I’m also a lot more aware than that kid who thought life was about him. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I do know that everything we do and can be boils down to the choices we make. I realize that, though that kid was wrong and life isn’t all about him, he–I–have to be the one to step forward and make the choices that make better, stronger, and ultimately happy.