From these pencils...

From these pencils a wealth of colour will flow to create a bright canvas of hope, love, happiness and joy. I love this image.

Sunday Scribblings - Decisions

"Make good decisions" is a piece of advice I give to all of my clients. Most of them are high school students, facing some sort of issues in their life that are making it hard to show up to school, to concentrate on getting an education. I take a decision they have made, and trace it back through the various stages, and highlight all the times they had choices. Before they started swearing at the teacher there was a choice, before they agreed to sell marijuana on school grounds, there was a choice. Before they threw the first punch, there was a choice. Mostly they can see the choices available and show some degree of insight into why they made the choice they did, and see how this was maybe not the best thing for them. Sometimes, of course, they're just telling me what I want to hear, so I ask that very question - "Do you really believe it, or are you just telling me what you think I want to hear?" I admit to enjoying calling them on their bullshit. But as I read the prompt for today, I thought of my own decisions.

I've made the decision to spend most of my adult life travelling, or preparing to travel somewhere to do something. At the time it seems very important that I go and do this thing, whatever it is - live in another country, meet new people, push my boundaries, get away from here - but when I get there I am every bit as lost "there" than I am here. I am reminded of the movie "Sound of Music". The Baroness visits the Captain at his estate in Austria for the first time and she tells him he seems at home here, and asks him "How can you leave it as often as you do?" The Captain, whose wife died and left him with 7 children, replies "I don't know. Pretending to be madly busy...or perhaps, searching for a reason to stay". I wonder if that is me - I make the decision to leave not because of where I am going to go or what I am going to do, but rather because there is little reason to stay. If my mother didn't live here, there would be almost no reason, beyond my lovely friends and some extended family. Is a decision really a decision when there is nothing to decide? Perhaps the idea of actually making a decision is bullshit - maybe we just choose based on the given facts and dress choices up as decisions, somewhat akin to dressing mutton up as lamb. I'm not sure it actually matters if we are making choices or decisions. I may be rambling, or I may have hit upon something quite significant.

I work full time, and have chosen to do so in order to get my finances in shape. It isn't actually a decision as if I don't pay the bills, some guys will come and get me. It's a choice, because I don't want banks chasing me, and debt collectors appearing on my doorstep. I have chosen between two things - financial ruin and maintaining the status quo. But I have I really made a decision? Could I still live my life if I didn't pay my bills? Not really. I'd be in jail, or in court and my credit history would be toast and if I ever wanted a bank to loan me money I'd be screwed. I made the only decision I could, which means I didn't make a decision at all. I merely chose the lesser of two evils.

Alternatively, I choose not to fulfill my dream of being a writer, perhaps because I haven't yet made the decision to do so. That particular decision is going to cost me and I'm not sure I have it in me to pay the ferryman, who I think may already be looking for me. Perhaps he has caught the scent of an impossible dream in the wind around me. I had a strange dream when I napped today. I was in a huge line, standing in a dirty broken down boat that was floating on a thin strip of scummy water between concrete walls. There was an entrance to the underground, ahead and the boats there were disappearing into a black cave. A live rotting corpse with green skin was standing right before the entrance and it was dressed in a filthy brown cloak. The boats were backed up as this was where we had to pay to get through and I remember feeling dread, like this rotting corpse was going to want me to pay an impossibly high price to get into the cave. With boats behind me, and boats in front of me filled with scared and horrified people just like me, it wasn't like I could make a decision not to pay. There was no options. There was no choice, and no decision. I had to pay, and it was going to hurt, the screaming kind of hurt. I wonder if choices and decisions are an illusion of free will - if we make ourselves believe we can choose, when in actual fact, there is nothing to choose, no decision to make. You do what society tells you to do, and if you don't a rotting corpse at the mouth of a yawning cave leading into fuck knows where will make you pay the dearest price imaginable.