Something’s got to give

As I lie there 4am in the morning, it got me thinking, what does one give up for one’s career and for love? It’s almost like the theory, do you follow your head or your heart…

Once you have made the decision, there’s no turning back… because everything that you have given up; starts to walk out of your life. The things you never realized you had, the things you never thought you’d miss and the things that you never expected to happen… Almost instantly, you world has change so dramatically that you feel instantly lost. It’s like in the movies where there’s a short pause of darkness and time forwards to the next scene – the choice that you have made. And how is one to know when it is right or wrong? It is only after you have experienced the choice you have made that you realize what was more important to you and what did make you happy…

I was told to never regret anything, because the decision you made was once what you wanted at the time. You are living the life that you wanted so there shouldn’t be any regrets… non at all.

Life is a string of choices, one after another. Sometimes we make good ones and sometimes bad. Does our experiences help us to make better ones or do we just shelter and protect ourselves from the pain and from being hurt? Do we learn to shut people out and not opening our hearts… are we just becoming more cynical?

“when you are young, your whole life is about the pursuit of fun. Then you grow up and learn to be cautious, you could break a bone or a heart. You look before you leap and sometimes you don’t leap at all because there’s not always someone there to catch you. And in life, there’s no safety net…

When did it stop being fun and start being scary? Maybe mistakes are what make our fate… without them what would shape our lives? Maybe if we had never veered off course, we wouldn’t fall in love or be who we are…”

They say that when you are unsure about a decision, toss a coin and when it’s spinning in the air, your heart will want it to land on a certain side. So regardless what the coin toss was, you already know your preference.

Do we just try to avoid making a choice because we are afraid? When it comes to the matters of the heart, do we avoid decisions so that we won’t experience what we have in the past? Do we avoid asking questions because we are afraid of rejection and disappointment?

In the end, how do we make the ‘perfect’ choice when it comes to deciding our ‘significant other half’? Don’t we all just want to have a deep connection with someone who makes us laugh? Someone who when you think about them, you can’t wipe the smile off your face? Someone that you feel like you can be yourself around… someone that makes you feel comfortable… someone that you don’t want to lose… And sometimes we make a choice because we want to perhaps grow it and see where this could all lead to… I mean if we don’t try, how do we know?

Does love conquer all?

I recently watched the movie ‘like crazy’ and in the movie, the main characters both broke others' hearts/tried to give up and eventually gave up so much of their own lives just to be with the one that they really love… is their choices/their actions like crazy? Does ‘love’ arouse us to be in the state of mental unsteadiness…? Are we irrational, illogical, chemically imbalanced, even considered mentally ill when we fall in love? If love was a health condition, why hasn’t a cure being formulated? What if there was a drug to cure heartache… or is that why clubs/bars/house parties in the suburbs are filled with singletons on substance/alcohol abuse to ‘cure’ their heartache/problems/worries? Is the temporary surge of endorphins, this chemical balancing act to allow you to be happy just for that little while, the solution to our problems?

Or are these just temporary escapes, short term anesthetics to allow us to run away from our problems and never really solving them? Or are we just utilizing our own built-in self-defense mechanism: denial. “Denial serves as a coping device; it provides a safe place to hide the bad news until we are able to face reality. It allows your mind to gradually accept the unacceptable and is, at times, a blessing.”

I suppose there’s never the perfect choice, nor is there a perfect answer. No matter which path we take, no matter who we choose, there’s always going to be two sides to a coin. After all, every decision we make - something’s got to give…