Week three

Choice

Last week I reflected on control. The flip side of control is choice.  We tend to see choice as a good thing and in many ways our consumerist society is founded on this belief. Companies vie for our custom by offering us new variations on old themes. It seems that just continuing to make the same product in the same way is a recipe for company disaster. They strive to meet our craving for new, better, different, novel. But sometimes making a choice can be quite difficult. I can find myself staring at the range of toothpastes in the supermarket  and feeling quite confused. If I pay more will it be better? Do I want whitening, healthy gums, plaque control, all-in-one?  Doesn’t everybody want all-in-one? Surely keeping your teeth and gums healthy must require just about the same product for everyone?  Wouldn’t it be nice if there was just one toothpaste which did the trick and I didn’t have to make a choice?

Of course making a choice can be a very enjoyable thing and I have to confess to taking great delight in coming up with the spec. for the Mini I bought in 2019. I always used to say that a car was just there to get me from A to B. Give me something which is economical, safe and as environmentally friendly as possible. But when I felt that I seriously needed ‘cheering up’ in 2019 a racing green Mini with white stripes and a light coloured interior did the trick very nicely. It still gives me great pleasure.

But there are other kinds of choices we have to make. These often relate to how we spend our time and they have been seriously curtailed in the last year. I cannot now choose to go to a concert, the cinema, the theatre a restaurant or even for dinner at a friend’s house. And yet when I get up in the morning the day stretches ahead and choices have to be made at every point.  I do have a vague pattern for the mornings which includes 20 minutes yoga, 20 minutes meditation and 20 minutes with the on-line newspaper. Meals and cups of coffee punctuate the day and sometimes there are coaching clients and Zoom calls. But much of my daily calendar has large empty spaces. I imagine there are many people with frantic lives who would give a great deal to have this kind of space: space to read, to write, to play the piano, to engage in craft activities, to watch films, dramas and documentaries, even to sit and do nothing.  But, like everything in life, it can sometimes present its own sweet challenges! 

Last Saturday was grey. The weather was grey and I ended up feeling grey. Not black, fortunately, but light grey, colourless, insipid.  I knew the weather was going to be bad so I decided not to rush getting up - get up when you feel like it Christine. Never mind the yoga and the meditation just get down those stairs to breakfast and take as long  as you like.  So I did. I suppose I was ready to properly start my day by about 11.30am. So how was I going to spend it? Strangely nothing held much appeal. The craft activity proved to be a bit challenging with tiny pieces of wire which needed gluing together to make a tiny stool. I had glue all over my fingers and the legs of the said stool wouldn’t line up properly. Mildly frustrating. Give up and go and do something else!  Get your book out. I’m reading Ben Macintyre’s ‘The Spy and the Traitor’ - very slowly. It’s good but requires a level of concentration and recall of the various Russian characters you read about in previous chapters. I’m not the best reader as I find my attention wanders and I think of other things to do which seem more important.  This was me on Saturday. And so I drifted aimlessly through my day jumping from one activity to the next with no real sense of satisfaction. By 8.30pm I was ready to tear my hair out!  

Ultimately choice was the problem. Whatever I had chosen left open the possibility that something else might have been better, easier, more enjoyable: the seeds of discontent were sprouting!  There felt to be no reason to sustain attention or to work at anything because none of it seemed to matter. But perhaps, there lies the rub. On some level you have to decide that it does matter. Not because of any ulterior motive but because it is what is what you are doing now. It is what life is offering you now and that matters because it’s your life! The satisfaction comes from making your choices matter and perhaps from realising that you will never get that particular moment again.