Making Choices

Has it been only two years ago?  It seem  like a lifetime.  I huddled ion my bed, curtains drawn closed and trembled.  Depressed.  I remember one day.  I decided I needed I could escape this darkness by writing ten blessings a day.  My first try all I could do was to list the names of my dogs over and over.  Dodi.  Baruch.  Dodi.  I could think of no other blessing.

I was afraid of the future.  What if?  And if then….The treadmill of life was rolling by.  Too scared to hop on, I merely cowered on my bed.

I could not open the shades in my room then.  Shadeless Arizona sun beat into my room month after month.  No architect looked at the location o the bedroom, shifted the exposure.  No gardener planted a fast-growing shrub as a shield.  Oh, those cookie-cutter tract homes.

I moved on.  Life is relentless that way.  I learned about choices.  Every moment we have a choice.  When I was as buried as I was in doubts and fears, I realized it was the basic choice.  I could breathe or not breathe.  I could move my leg, or not.  And when I did not make a conscious choice, life made it for me.  If I chose not to breathe for too long, my body forced one on me.

Generally, not one for sitting and doing nothing, I sat there for several weeks.  I was paralyzed,  Too many choices.  I stuck to the basics, just breathe.  Eventually I began to reach out.  FaceBook was there.  I found a genial bunch of spiritual writers from around the world, felt a simpatico, and began to write to my new-found friends.  They suggested workbooks, strategies for me.  Always one to reach out to others, I began to take an interest in others’ plights.  I made suggestions to them as well.  

As I opened further to possibilities, I began to see the effect the bleakness of my house was pulling me down.  Yes.  It had a large living room, a perfect showroom for my lifetime collection of treasures.  I could walk outside the house and look west to see Mingus Mountain from there.  I could make the effort to watch the sun, the moon set beyond her peak.  But the possibility of a better view intrigued me.  I could make choices.

Pulled by the lure of Mingus, I chose to move across the river, closer to my enigmatic mountain.  Fate helped me find a new bedroom which, shaded by trees, provided me a view of the stretch of the Verde River.  The trees sifted through the rays of sun.  And when I chose to get beyond my bedroom I could walk a few feet further and the view I was afforded was a close-up of Mingus.  And when I went into the kitchen to cook, the sight of Jerome, clinging to the flank of Mingus beckoned me.

It took me a year to climb up Mingus to Jerome, to discover the creative opportunities there.  I walked into the thick stucco walls to fine a community of artists, a cast for dramas I had never been in before.  I found I had a proclivity for producing art, a desire for the challenge for marketing that art to others.  

And here I am now.  I make conscious choices all day.  No longer one to lie in my bed, breathe because the alternative is virtually impossible and allow my lack of decision-making dictate a bland life, I now can choose to walk my dogs around the block admiring expansive views.  I can choose to eat a healthy breakfast and slip the five miles up the mountain to my studio.  I can even choose to snuggle back under the covers, stroke my dogs and sleep in a bit more.  I do not let go of my underlying choice, to live a fulfilling, creative life within a circle of creative friends, and two very loving dogs.  ​

One day recently, just for fun, I decided to list my blessingsThe task was challenging.  I had too many to enumerate.

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