"See, I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil... I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life." - Moses
Time goes by so quickly. It seems as though it was only yesterday that I was this energetic, spunky little kid with a ton of curiosity and boy, was I ever brave. I was so brave in fact that Ma spent most of my wonder years trying to stop me from taking the chances I wanted to take. The ultimate parent, protecting her young the best she could.
I am at that age where I have begun to see my friends, good friends pass away and in the throws of these changes, I recognize that I am entering that stage of life where it's "now or never." What I am realizing is that "never" isn't part of our vocabulary. We will pass on, just as certainly as we were born and for that reason, I have been questioning how some people can choose life and others give up.
There were so many times when I wanted to give up. I lived in desperate flight to one thing after another hoping that the change would give me the true happiness I was looking for out of life. But I have never given up. Why do others give in and put a halt to their progress and sometimes their lives? What is it that makes some make the decision to leave those they love and ultimately hurt those they love by making the decision to give up?
We all have to admit that we have made bad decisions, bad choices. We have to live with those choices too. But the key is to let them go. Let them fly away or dissolve like fog or snow. We can make the choice to be frozen in our past or understand that every single thing we've experienced has brought us to where we are now. Ultimately, it boils down to this...love is not enough. Hard work is not enough. Looking at ourselves honestly is the only thing that creates the change that I believe so many of us are looking for in our lives.
We can decide to hide our heads. We can run away from confrontation and not live in our personal truth. Or...maybe we just tired. This, this I believe is why so many people, good people leave us. The depths of the human condition still leave me in awe. What I do know is that there is a hunger, a passion and love of people that keeps me going. How others lose that passion is baffling and very sad indeed. So how does one find peace with all of this?
The answer, of course centers around the word...love. We shouldn't feel guilty if we love someone who cannot love themselves. They've made a choice. We shouldn't feel guilty when we have given all our time, energy and understanding to help and be the constant force that shows our loyalty and reliability. That is an honor not a curse. When we love someone, with all our heart, we have taken the ultimate leap into finding a new strength, a new set of values that we never knew we had. That is the gift. It's not about loss, or the threat of loss. It's about change and the education we receive from surviving.
Ma may have tried to shield us from a life of hurt and disappointment but now I realize that the shield is mine to use. As it is for each of us, we chart our own course. Peace comes from knowing that life has an inordinate number of challenges. Sometimes we get hurt, devastated and we wonder how we will recover. Those that recover do so because they don't know any other way. "The Road Not Taken" means we persevere. We put one foot in front of the other. We aren't afraid to love.
