The Dilemma Dilemma

I’d forgotten about sunrise, about returning clouds as pink and blue as baby clothes; their portent. Beginnings make promises with fingers crossed behind their back. What trust must we haul down from our inner attics on rickety stairs to believe in a beginning? A new project. Relationship. Job. Novel.

Even season: Last year autumn barged in, fickle from one day to the next yet pressing forward unstoppably. (This last is not the word I wanted. And voilá, another beginning’s dilemma: To fall down the rabbit hole of the Right Word Quest, or mark the place to come back to, forge onward, and lose the moment? Simply acknowledging the question is distracting. Rabbit warrens have multiple entrances. Where we emerge may look nothing like the place we fell from; the path we followed nowhere to be seen. Look for a way through the brambles. Sharpen shears for stems unimagined at the outset.)

I heard a woman compare her practice of surfing with her practice of writing. Alert to changes, adapting, finding balance come what may. Whether upright all the way in, or wrecked, rumbled, and rashed, she would get up and go for it again. I regret that I cannot remember her name. She was from Texas. Her story has stayed with me through two decades of wreck and rumble. Ride and exhilaration.

The more slowly and intentionally I move, the more time temptation has to draw me aside for whispered intrigue, tantalizing aroma, bird call. That way discovery lies—or is it a mere diversion?

Hiking behind a goal-oriented companion, I learn not to call out every penstemon, gymnastic trunk, tiny pool of rain reflecting a snippet of forest canopy. The two of us arrive at our goal having walked divergent paths, even as our boots trod the same mud.

Some days present an either/or choice at nearly every breath. Some days I tire of careful navigating and give gut instinct full rein. Because it is possible to ask too many questions. As easy as napping through the unique gift of each day.

It can be hard to tell when “making the most of the day” transforms into speeding across the water’s surface on a stiff breeze, never noticing the bright fish in the eel grass underneath. But might crossing too slowly mean running out of fresh water?

Every choice a gain and a loss. A grief and a gratitude. It doesn’t take too many of those days to make it hard to get out of bed on the next one, missing the promise of its infantile sunrise.

Two paths diverged in a wood,
and I took both of them,
got lost twice at the same time
and doubled my joy.

(With apologies to Robert Frost.)