This was the night. It was the first night that I was, even for one minute, open to the idea of not writing.
It was a small voice, and it was quickly quashed, but it was there.
And I want to tell you what I said to myself, because it's something that's served me well over my life, and not something that I've heard many other people say.
"You chose this."
It's three words—they're an anchor phrase for me, a short phrase that I say to remind myself of my values when things get tough. A life raft in the swirling oceans of life (and my emotions). They mean that my life is the outcome of my actions.
I was busy today because I chose to work at this job, for myself, in the house, as a consultant. That life is all about ups and downs, busy periods and downtime. I was busy because I have a wife that I'm committed to, and part of my life moulds itself around her shape and her needs—she went to work today (at a birth), and that meant I had to pick up slack. I chose that. I was busy because I had kids, and kids take time. There's the technical stuff—pick them up from school, feed them—but there's the emotional side as well. They need nurturing, to be played with and paid attention to. I chose that.
Each of those choices is a little investment, a part of myself that I've paid and continue to pay. Those investments pay dividends each and every moment—in support, in love, in the smiles of my children that I can never describe but would bottle and keep forever if I could, along with their little toes. But those investments also come with management fees, like any investment. But what lunatic would get mad over the fees to an investment that changed his life?
It's just, in the thick of things, we are just that—lunatics. Our vision narrows (or at least mine does). It becomes difficult to see anything more than the task in front of you, and how onerous it is, and how much more exciting life on the beach in Bali with no responsibilities sounds than sat on your knees in a wet bathroom after a long day of work, bathing children.
"You chose this."
Remembering in those moments that the chores are for a purpose, that the difficulty is serving a greater end, that there are moments and lifetimes beyond this one—that's what pulls me through. I chose this. I chose a life of hardship now, because with that life comes love and peace and a way of being that can only be accessed through this road. And when I remember that, I get a second wind, and a third, and however many I need.
"I chose this."
And so I sit to write. Not because I'm expected to, or because I'm letting anyone down if I don't—people are very good about being non-judgemental these days. I sit because I chose to. Because I want what I will become at the end of these 365 days, what I am becoming now.
Our lives are a series of choices, of sliding doors that take us to places we never would have been to otherwise. We'll never know the weight of a choice unchosen, or a path not trodden, or a smile not given. We'll never know what could have been. We all choose to walk a path, and that path takes us to lands unknown and uncharted. But we have to walk the path we've taken. We have to brave the forests with their nettles and the windswept tundras. We have to learn to build shelter where we are, and to see the beauty in that particular path. For this is our destiny—we cannot walk every path, and those who try to are doomed to stay in paralysis forever, their life stuck in the amber of Peter Pan, with Tinkerbell whispering in their ear of all things that could be if only we never had to grow up. And more than that—every path has brambles and thickets and thorns. Every path has switchbacks and wrong turns, ugly bits and beautiful vistas.
I chose this.
I chose this path.
And will walk it.