Choices

Life is a series of choices. Some are simple and almost automatic. Some are difficult and some even life changing. When we are young most of these choices are made for us. What time do we go to bed? What schools we will we attend? As we get older our own decisions become more apparent. It happens naturally. The more difficult choices start with every passing year. 

Probably the most difficult choices that we will ever make begin in our teenage years. These are the choices that form whom it is that we become. Many of them are learning experiences. Some stick, some don’t. How should I style my hair today? What will I chose to write about for my book report? Who are the people that I will hang out with this year? 

When I was 16 I was an average teenager making average teenage decisions. Just a few of years before, a decision had been made for me that I would attend Foxcroft School in Middleburg VA. Years before that my mother had decided that I would not be participating in a gifted program at my elementary school. I don’t know what drove this choice. At 16 I made my very own life choice that I wanted to become an international flight attendant for a major airline carrier. This decision happened during my first flight to Europe. I was going to attend classes for an international study program in Madrid Spain that was offered by my high school. I had found my future career! To my father’s dismay, I applied when I was 19 and still in college to Northwest Orient Airlines.  As a college sophomore I was told that I was too young and had to wait to reapply when I was 21. I finally interviewed with them  years later but now I was married and 8 months pregnant. That didn’t pan out. At 23 just after having said baby, (a beautiful baby girl that has become quite the phenomenon herself! more about that later) I was hired on the spot at a TWA open house. The rest is history. I, ironically, ended up at NWA in 1986 and subsequently Delta where I retired last August after 35+ years of a fabulous flying career. That one choice changed my entire life. 

That, in my mind, was an easy choice. I have had much much more difficult choices. Some have been heart wrenching. I’ve made excellent choices and I have made some very bad choices, but none of them have been wrong. 

Choices are strange and elusive sometimes. They come full circle though. They also become easier again as we get older. Perhaps it’s the wisdom that comes with age. Or perhaps just a lot of practice. 

There is an ongoing debate about free will. I believe there is such a thing.  I don’t think that our paths are necessarily predisposed. I do believe that everything happens as it is supposed to happen. We may not see that at the time. Sometimes the reason isn’t made clear for decades. Sometimes the reasons are not for us.
I believe that the choices that we make get us to wherever it is that we need to go. Our choices teach us. They mold us and change us. They introduce us to the people that will matter. They make us better people. Some choices cannot be rectified. Some change the trajectory of our lives. Some we rejoice and some we regret. 

Choices! 

Voilà ~ So, here I am.

A choice that I made half of a life ago led me to Paris. It was not a direct path. It was by no means a smooth or easy path. Life rarely is that.  Funny how life goes isn’t it? I surely would never have known this is where my heart would land me. Living in my hometown of Pittsburgh and living in Paris. Writing books, telling stories, painting, crafting, decorating and remodeling…creating. I have become a character from a well read novel.