It is easy to make choices when all you are responsible for is yourself. You look at your needs and goals, make choices to get them met in the best way possible weighing all the pros and cons or not as you choose and the outcome is on you regardless of what happens. But when you are in a relationship with others, when you are responsible for and to others, things become much more complicated.
There is the well-being of the others you are responsible for as a baseline and then their happiness on top of it. And your availability to provide for that. Plus being able to be with the people you are having a relationship with for a significant amount of time each day and being able to participate in the relationship in any substantive way. And still manage to provide a life for yourself which means money, sorry to say. Unless you are living off the grid and doing subsistence farming and if so, money really isn’t an issue. With all of that in mind your own personal happiness, goals in life, and best path to the best you is much more complicated and much less clear. And every choice you make can make cacophony or harmony out of all the interconnected lives around you.
So how do you balance the choices and responsibilities? How do you deal with the successes and the failures when they affect others? How do you deal with theirs? Because it’s not a one way street. The argument they thought was between them rattled your cage, caused you to lose sleep, and yet you still have to move through your day. What do you do with the soaring joy and the nagging regrets? Do you choose not to do anything? Do you become paralyzed and never move, never choose, never try? Do you choose never to have relationships because of the difficulties? Do you give 50% and see what happens, always leaving a door open in order to escape at the first sign of trouble? Do you plunge in head first and see what happens? Do you try your best and give it everything you’ve got? Do you accept your responsibilities and make the best choices for all of you and navigate through it?
In the end we may not choose the responsibilities that arrive in our laps, but we make the choices on how we act on them. Not choosing is a choice, not acting is an action, and not seeing only means that you are blind to what is there. Don’t be afraid to make a choice. Miracles are all around you waiting for you to take the next step.
