No Decision is a Decision

The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.

                                      - - - Albert Einstein

I was sixteen when I was accepted into a professional ballet company. I’d started training when I was eight and I’d grown up in a ballet world, in the studio and on stage. That was all I knew. When I was nineteen, an unexpected acting opportunity came my way and shook up my world. I pondered what to do, it was a major decision, and I left the ballet. My life changed suddenly and dramatically and I started a new one that couldn’t have been more different from what I was accustomed to. Nearly everything I did required a decision based on being in a place that I knew nothing about. I had to change my old point of view and take up another one.

Change affects us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. When I retired from the ballet, I experienced all of these states at that time. In the physical aspect, I was used to training and moving my body all day long and that ended. In the mental aspect, I had a plethora of ballets memorized in my head that took up a great deal of space, but they were no longer useful to me. In the emotional aspect, when I wasn’t dancing, I felt unsure and scared. And in the spiritual aspect, it had felt like I was dancing on the moon and now my feet were planted on the ground.

When I left the ballet bubble, I was constantly faced with change and I didn’t like it. Most people don’t. Sometimes we hate it because it scares us so much. We don’t like being out of control. We don’t like having to make decisions with no idea about the outcome. We’d prefer staying right where we are and letting life swirl around us, but that isn’t an option. It changes with or without our permission. We ask ourselves, “What if I make the wrong decision and it ends up in disaster? What if I say the wrong thing and I end up regretting it?” I learned that change doesn’t happen on the outside. It happens on the inside when we shift the way we’re looking at things.

I was a guest speaker recently at a friend’s Zoom gathering about writing through change. As I answered questions from the participants, it occurred to me that while change signifies the end of something, it also signifies the beginning of something. If we can quiet our minds and focus on the obstacle in front of us, if we can be gentle with ourselves, it’s easier to think and to act. It’s easier to see our choices and make decisions. Maybe we just have to is go with what our original idea and make it work as we move along. Or maybe we have to go back, start all over again and make a different choice.

Change is inevitable so we might as well make a choice, which ups the odds of doing something that works and makes us feel good. William James, American philosopher and psychologist said, “No decision is, in itself, a decision.” It reminds me of a lyric by Bob Dylan. “He not busy being born is busy dying.”

If change happens gradually, we can gentle ourselves to make the adjustment slowly. We can see what’s going on and we can change our minds to accommodate it. But if things shift in a split second like they often do, the intelligent thing to do is buckle up, ride the wave and see where we end up. We have to stop thinking we’re going to make a mistake. There are no mistakes. There are simply other ways of doing things.

Often we see ourselves trying to pass a test that life puts in front of us. We think we have to figure it all out. But there is no test. Nothing gets solved because just when we think we figured it out, change shows up. It doesn’t work to mistreat and push ourselves around. It’s hard to make choices when we’re beating ourselves up. It doesn’t work to shame ourselves if things doesn’t go the way we want. They probably won’t.

When we aren’t sure what the best choice is, instead of hiding or running away, we can choose to flow with the change, to allow room for it and all the emotions that come with it. No pushing or shoving. If someone else wants to give you advice, they’re usually talking about themselves so you can listen but be careful to trust yourself and use your own intuition.

If we can find some compassion for ourselves, we can be courageous, keep putting one foot in front of the other and be curious about where it will end up. Where is this going? How do I manage my fear along the way and keep moving toward whatever is coming next? How do I find the compassion to take good care of myself in such shaky circumstances?

There is a famous saying that the only constant in life is change. So we might as well accept it. If we try to get ahead of it, it’ll turn around and ambush us. If we try to keep our distance by lagging behind, it’ll wait for us and hit us when we think we outfoxed it. The resistance to it is what hurts. The mind wants certainty, but you can’t always get what you want. Life itself is a state of not being sure, not knowing what comes next or how to get there. We just have to keep on trying. We do our best not to cling to one outcome or another. That keeps us endlessly stuck. When we let go and stop struggling, we can awaken to whom we really are and we feel free.

From my own experience, I’ve found that my attempts to achieve lasting pleasure and security are at odds with the fact that I am part of a dynamic and ever-changing system in which everything and everyone is in process. I try to let go and see each day as a gift that is transitory. I try to soak up everything I see along my path. Whether it feels good or bad, it’ll change in the blink of an eye. I don’t want to miss a single blink.