“What if I went out on a limb? What if I suddenly did something different today? What if I just walked away? What if I answered that same old question with a different response today? What if I just said no instead of yes? What if I just said yes instead of no?
What if I did one of these things and everything fell apart? What if I did one of these things and I lost my job? What if I did one of these things and my entire social life imploded on me, leaving me unable ever to reclaim my previous state of being; the one that was so dominated by the simpler life of just asking “What if” all the time?
If this were a 1950’s black and white movie, the character opposite me in this shot would just slap me across the face and say something like, “Get a hold of yourself!”
Well, at least there are a few aspects of the 21st century that look a wee bit different than the 20th. A few. Sort of.
These little eddies; whirlpools of indecision, swirling and swirling all alongside the river of life are still there. And there is more debris stacked around them than ever before. Circumstantial dams constructed out of countless obstacles readily defined by prospective decision makers as too substantial to surmount, too risky to summit, too different to experience.
Simply put, not familiar enough.
These sophisticated structures are as polarizing and controversial as a beaver nest and as colonial, bulky, and heavy as the nest of a Monk parakeet.
However debatable, however described, they don’t flow with the river. They don’t flow at all.
Prospective decision makers are, mind you, not decision makers. They are spinning in a sort of “pre-decision” purgatory. And the longer one spends in this nebulous web, the more comfortable and familiar that complex becomes. So much so that the phase becomes the life, and the life is dammed.
M A K E A D E C I S I O N
Just replace “What if” with “Why not”. I know what you’re thinking. Why not? Because everything could fall apart or I could lose my job or my entire social life could implode, leaving me unable ever to reclaim my previous state of being; the one that was so dominated by the simpler life of just asking “What if” all the time.
Try to keep your head above water, resisting the urge to submerge yourself in semantics, and envision yourself saying, instead, “Why not?” – and in saying this, meaning, “Let’s just go for it.”
I say this because I truly believe that you, being invincible as you are [invincible because you are alive and drawing breath, having survived your life thus far], have the ability to problem-solve. IF you are faced with a less than favorable outcome based on a decision you’ve made, you would figure it out. IF you were to lose your job or your social life were to be reduced to rubble, right there in front of everyone on your city block, you would figure it out. You would do what you need to do to adjust and move forward, using all the multitudes of resources this world has amassed over the 20 (plus) centuries that came before today.
There is a flow zone. The river, my friend. Full of opportunity, uncertainty, triumph, and terror. There is also a riparian zone, where one may rest near the bank after a time in the flow, preparing once more to float forward.
But the sticks and stones strung between these two zones will do nothing to excite or replenish the Prospector, panning for decisions, panning for decisions, panning for decisions, and finding none.
Paz.
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