Make Uncomfortable Choices

“Make uncomfortable choices,” I heard a dancer auditioning for So You Think You Can Dance say that just now. He was advising his students to get outside of their comfort zone in order to create something new.

Wow. That woke me up!

Life is nothing but uncomfortable choices, not made by us but by the Universe on our behalf. I would not have chosen to lose a child and spouse. To say that made me uncomfortable is the understatement of my life. But once the universe put me on that course, everything I did became uncomfortable.

Oh, I sought refuge in conformity, but it had no use for me. I was destined for an uncomfortable life. So I write in order to make people feel something so deep they can hardly bear it. People weep over my words because I pull no punches. I had none pulled with me. God got me by the short hairs of my neck and yelled, “Write!”

I can no longer thumb through mementoes of a life gone wrong. I can no longer cry easily at sad movies. Something has caused such a deep shift in me that I have fallen off the edge of enlightenment and into the Canyon of Comfort.

Don Theo works his magic on me in an hour. He strips the grief off and disposes of it completely. I have no questions for him and he has none for me. Just this meeting between people who are able to accept that life and death are forces totally beyond the ego’s control. Am I ready to be choiceless so I can be reborn?

Can I throw out the words I used to cajole people in making people think I knew something in order to be something? Can I discard the image in order to be the essence? Can I throw away my crutches and walk?

Don Theo is not concerned with this. He sees me flying, more than likely. There are no comfortable choices to make. There are no guarantees. There is nothing to attain. It is all down the drain. I think I see a rainbow hovering over the garbage heap that used to be my life. I think I see an end to the suffering. I have seen beyond the place where things are happening. I only thought they did.

I need to share one special memory with you. As my little girl was put into the car for her last trip to the children’s hospital where she died, we asked if she wanted to lie down in the back seat. “No,” she said, “I want to sit up front where I can see the sky and the trees.” And so she did. And so she did.

Vicki Woodyard