Letting go of choices

Like it or not, there isn’t room in our lives for everything.


Some things are mutually exclusive: you cannot be a vegetarian and eat Kobe beef, for example. Some things are not-so-mutually exclusive: to some extent, you can be a couch potato and have a yoga practice.

For some people, letting go of the option of making a decision about things to include and exclude in their lives is essential—or at least really damned useful. Gretchen Rubin, of The Happiness Project, suggests that some people are abstainers and other people are moderators—that is, some people need to give up chocolate altogether to kick a candy habit, other people can be satisfied with two M&M’s a day (I have friends like that. I don’t understand it, but I have witnessed it.). Some people have to quit smoking cold turkey, others can gradually let go.

I am an abstainer, for the most part. When I’m making a change slowly, I tend to be very conscious of WHY I’m not doing it all at once. For example, if I were to make the decision to become a vegetarian, it’s impractical for me to simply empty my cupboards and refrigerator and restock with all veggies. (unless you’re doing it for a health emergency, in which case the priorities change drastically, don’t they?) What IS practical is to make buying meat a non-option. In other words, I can cook what I have, but there’s no more coming in. This way, I don’t have to think about how much I’m buying to stay 'on track' (I’m having two meat meals this week, so that’s….you know what I mean), nor do I have the option of heading to the grocery store later in the week just ‘cause I feel like it. It’s not an option. I might have six weeks’ worth of steak in my freezer because I went shopping before I made the decision, but there won’t be any more coming in.

Part of being consciously sane is deciding—since there isn’t room for everything—what isn’t optional and making that happen. You do this, in part, by forming a complete picture of how you want your life to feel, and then doing only that. It’s like the old story of the guy talking to the sculptor about how he creates, and the sculptor says “easy, if I want a sculpture of a horse, I just cut away everything that doesn’t look like a horse.”

That third ear? Not an option.