Choices

I picked up Dark Matter on my kindle immediately after reading this post by Heath W. Black, and finished it within two days. Like Heath it had a surreal effect on me, making me hold a magnifying glass over my memories as well as being immensely grateful for the life I lead now. The book is so good that I wish I could spoil it just so I can write about the details that blew my mind, but I wouldn’t because I won’t want to ruin the process for you, should you decide to do the same. Is this becoming a chain letter? :)

Without revealing too much, Dark Matter is about the roads we could have taken but didn’t, and wondering all the what-ifs. There are so many choices I have made in my life that were very questionable: quitting school, those relationships I shouldn’t have had, bridges I shouldn’t have burned, quitting the company that made this very platform, leaving San Francisco for good, being unemployed so I can work seriously on myself…the list goes on.

Many of these choices seemed insane at first — at least according to societal standards — upon making them I often had to face a long period of internal torture and self-doubt, not to mention enduring external judgment and disapproval. Some of these decisions were validated only after a long time: who would have known quitting school in favour of practicing design in 1999 would turn out to be one of the best decisions in my life?

But I have gone through life enough to know. The point of making choices isn’t about validation or getting time to prove ourselves right. It is about the willingness to undertake responsibility for our own choices and being willing to face the consequences of that decision, regardless of the outcome. It is about fine-tuning our internal compass, learning to listen to our own gut and trust ourselves. That yes, we can stand to clean up our own mess if we end up making one.

I have learned that sometimes the most incongruous event can turn out to be the turning point we need, there are almost always silver linings in dark clouds, painful lessons build up our wells of empathy, awful people can be the ones to lead us to meet significant people in our lives.

Sometimes we lose sight of how beautiful the mundane can be, the mundaneness made possible out of the sum of our choices. How many things have to be in sync in order to produce what we call an ordinary day. We do not cherish the reality we have, until it is harshly taken away from us.

After reading Dark Matter I went to hug my partner a lot tighter. I can’t imagine what would my life be if I had taken a slightly different turn and missed out on my meeting with her. Even before reading the book I had often mused about how opportune and rare it was for us to be together. I had to make that choice to return to Singapore, we both had to be available in our late 30s, and be at a point of our lives where we had overlapping niche interests and friends for us to meet.

Maybe in both Heath’s story and mine, we would have met our partners regardless or maybe we would have met someone else or stay single and be equally fulfilled. Perhaps the magic lies in the quiet knowledge that though I could have had a similar reality or even a better one whatever better means, but the person I am in this reality wants to be in this one.

Yes, there is a lot in this reality that is just plain wrong but it is also the same reality that has made me learn to love humanity — that despite all the horrors we have endured, we just don’t give up trying.

In the same vein, there are parts of my life that had gone wrong or I wished I could do better, and there have been times when I honestly wished for it to end. Yet somehow I have found strength to carry on, the capacity to endure my mistakes with their resulting guilt and keep on seeking the most aliveness I can possibly bear.

Endnote:
Having choices — the choice to be schooled or not, the choice to love, the choice to move countries — is a privilege in this society, and to me, it should be a basic human right. It haunts me to no end that so many people are deprived of these choices and everyday I ask myself what can I do. There is survivor’s guilt, but instead of feeling paralysed I’ll rather use my choices to find possible answers.