Crossroads

Why do we idolize our choices? Agonize over every decision, make much ado over the act of deciding? Crossroads, forks, unmarked doors, candy shops, all the metaphors for choice and choosing. So many movies about choice and consequence, about what happens when you make one choice versus what happens when you make another. Do we really think it's so simple, our lives so linear, that one can trace different paths so neatly from their trailheads? "Choosing not to choose is still a choice." How many times have I heard that, passed off as wisdom?

Our obsession with choice is nothing more than our need to exert our will, to demonstrate in the act of choosing the fact that we were born and blessed with free will. I don't downplay the importance of the gift. God gave us free will so that we could choose to love Him, or choose to turn away from Him. Souls turn on the choice. But nevertheless, free will does not make us God, and our choices are not the fabric of our lives. Our choices are not the meaning. Love is more than a decision, even if it starts there.

Narcissus Toppled

it was a cruel deception of us both, but of you especially. "what would i do without you?" "you know me so well." but i didn't, or, at least, i didn't care. what i was in love with, if you can call it that, was how you, too, were fully enthralled by the Legend of Me. you could rattle off lists of my likes and dislikes quicker than i could. all the cities and towns where my nomadic family had once lived. petty hopes and cynical dreams, the nightmares from which i would awake screaming. all of these things you collected like bits of broken shells from the shore, and you would bring them out like trophies, as though they established possession.

maybe that would have been enough, and we could have continued that way, happily, both of us basking in the glow of Me. but then i met someone, and i became enthralled by his legend, and suddenly, i was not enough.