Choose To Be Happy

Gosh, this life that I have been granted is all about choices. The more I live… the more I understand it.

I was born to be free. We all are born to be free. Free to choose. Every choice I’ve made has steered my life this way or that way.

When I was a child, my parents chose certain things that I had no control over… but I had a choice on how to handle them. I could embrace or reject. I chose what kind of student I would be. I chose who my friends would be and wether to play sport or not. I loved music but I don’t think I really chose the guitar… I did enjoy it but I probably would have picked another instrument… my mother decided that I had long fingers so the guitar was it! Haha! Sometimes I wonder how her mind worked.

I chose to marry the first boy I had a semi adult relationship with. I was just seventeen when I met him and we were married before I was twenty. He was all my parents had said the man I married should be. He came from a good family with similar background to mine. He was going to be a professional. My parents knew his parents; therefore acceptable to them, etc. At the time, I failed to realize that all that would be unimportant later. I actually was able to check all the boxes of the checklist that had been inculcated in my head since I was a child.

This checklist did not include things like: Is he really the man for me? Does he understand me? Does he respect me? Do I respect and understand him? Am I really physically attracted to him? Are we compatible? Is he my spiritual equal? Is he energetically connected to me? Well, I was way too young at nineteen to know how to choose correctly. Nevertheless, I made a choice to marry and my life was thrust on that path.

Those expectations were just a way of putting me inside a box the size of a shoebox. That little box left little room for real growth…unless you managed to get out of it. Some or most people stay in their box all their lives. At that moment in time, I didn’t know I had a choice to be who I truly was. Instead choosing to be who they expected me to be.

I then chose to stay in the marriage, even though there were signs from the very beginning that it would be a struggle. I believe that the fear of breaking parental and societal expectations kept me there. It ends up taking me quite a few years to learn how not to “give a fig”. However, the universe has a plan for us… and I have done nothing wrong. Everything happened exactly how it had to happen. I’m sure that the reason it did will crystallize itself later in my life.

Eleven years after marrying I made a choice to have children. In all honesty, I wasn’t the motherly type. I didn’t dream of being a mother. However, I was curious about the experience, and I thought I may regret it if I didn’t have my children. I did and I absolutely adore my children… but yes it threw my life into parenthood. I then chose to raise my children giving them the “illusion” of a perfect family unit. Another type of cage? Maybe yes. What I didn’t know was that children pick up the signs and that they see more than we think. They are learning and absorbing and forming their own future behavior from what they have experienced. What did my boys see? They saw a marriage that was devoid of sweetness and passion. What did they learn? They learned that it is okay to treat the people that you love the most in a disrespectful manner. They also learned that it’s acceptable to be treated that way. They learned that a marriage like ours was normal. I pray they choose differently. I pray that our choices have not set them up for failure in their life.

I have learned that tough choices do bring the biggest rewards.

The most difficult choice of my life was to divorce my husband of 32 years. Mainly because the words had never been spoken. We were not a couple that talked about our issues. The “D” word had never been threatened or spoken. We fought little because I was an expert avoider. We had never ever talked separation either. It was painfully obvious that we had communication issues. Therefore, I believe he was completely taken by surprise when I did. Not because he wasn’t aware we were not right, but because he never in his wildest dreams thought I would dare to break with convention, and choose to change my life. He was still living inside his own box and had not realized that I had chosen to break out of mine a long time ago.

Choices choices choices! Choosing, when I am truly aligned with who I am, feels completely different. It’s not conflicted, it’s a freeing feeling. There are no doubts. It’s like a piece of the puzzle falling into its place.

That tough choice brought so much change to my life. It also changed the life of so many people around me. Oh… there was resistance. Nobody likes it when change is forced upon them. However, nobody died from it, and everyone adjusted to the changes eventually. Sometimes I feel that we give too much importance to ourselves. The reality is that if I were to die right now, the earth would still spin, my family will go on, my friends will toast to me (hopefully) and everyone would continue on with their lives.

I now choose to live a life that is truly mine. I want to believe that my choice to break free of that lukewarm marriage has also freed my children. By this I mean that I hope that they learned, by my example, that it’s okay to walk away from any situation that is not serving them, not growing them, or not making them happy.

I am now more conscious of my choices. I now choose to live my life fearlessly. I choose to practice gratitude. I choose to never again settle for less than I desire, and I choose to always stay true to myself.

I choose to be happy.