The Two Choices

Most of us wait far too long for life to feel ready.

We wait for clarity, or confidence, or a sign.

We wait for the moment when the fear dissolves.

We wait for the life we want to finally arrive so that we can begin living it.

But, what if the life we want doesn’t arrive first? What if it arrives because we choose it. And what if the life we already have becomes something different the moment we choose that too.

There are two choices, as far as I can tell.

To choose the life we have.

And to choose the life we want.

And it’s not that we choose one or the other; we choose both… and live them both now.

We can live each moment as if we have chosen it.

We can choose the life we want as if we already have it.

Not by pretending circumstances are different, but by choosing how we want to experience them.

For example:

I can’t choose to suddenly be doing meaningful work when I am not doing any.

But I can choose to relate to this moment with meaning; to bring meaning to it, to meet it as if meaning is already available.

It doesn’t give me the job, but it lets me experience meaning now. And then, my more embodied and intimate relationship with meaning becomes my guide towards meaningful work.

I want to choose my life with the same trust it chooses me. I find myself drawn to the simplicity of the squirrel who climbs the tree he has chosen, then moves through the branches as if they have chosen him too. He has what he wants and he wants what he has. In him, there is no difference.

If we choose our life fully, we begin to feel chosen by it too. Perhaps, we are all chosen ones… We must be, if we are here, if we are alive.

What would change if we lived our lives, and our place within them, as if we have been chosen for them? I do wonder…

Choosing the life you have is how you stand honestly in the harbour.

Choosing the life you want is to smell, taste, feel and imagine the open sea, until you see it is the very same water that holds you aloft in the harbour.

And being chosen? Well, maybe those are the winds of grace we must trust to take us to places we couldn’t even choose.

There is no need to wait for the circumstantial, when you can choose the experiential now.