This is one I said in as an offhand comment, in an offhand situation, and it struck resonance. I was the car with a friend, and she was talking through whether she wanted to do something or the other. As I remember it, while looking out the window, I said, “Everything is optional.”
She has repeated it back in many ensuring moments, in person, in texts, in times when I needed to be reminded of it myself, too. To be reminded that I was the one choosing in my life, and that in everything there is a choice. Everything, everything in our lives, in our days, in all we do is a choice. Even when it’s a sliver of choice that seems impossible to find, it’s there.
In my first, full 20-minute meditation session on my own during my Vedic meditation training, a panicked thought popped into my head almost right after I closed my eyes. What have I done; what am I doing; what have I decided to do; do I really have to do this for a full 20 minutes, twice a day, every day, until forever…??! It felt scary and like resignation, and then, a quiet voice gently, and powerfully reframed it almost right away. “It’s not that I have to do this. I get to do this.” That felt so much better. So much more freeing. So much more fun. And I made the choice to stay in that meditation. And I make the choice to do it, for me, as a gift, every time I do it and have, twice a day, for the past 2.5 years.
Remembering this, the option, the choice, I find brings more intention, presence empowerment and and appreciation for wherever I am. I have chosen to be doing this. To be writing this post, to be letting it go with little re-reading but the choice of feeling satisfaction and completion. I can choose whether to continue doing, anything. And in finding that choice, asserting that choice, this becomes more mine, and my gratitude and appreciation for it multiplies.
Where is the option here, wherever you are. What is it, and what do you want of it?
(Shout-out to my sweet, deep Scorpio friend Janna, who is following her surfing, skating, dancing heart to Hawaii for a couple months this summer. I adore you!)