No good choice

Sometimes none of your choices is good.

A new friend gave me that sentence to think about and it has been showing me the truth of itself for several days. We were talking about the few regrets we had in our lives and how it seemed some of them couldn't be avoided, then they said that. It rang in my heart as truth.

The obvious came to me easily. A burning building, a child in your arms on the third floor, flames up the stair case, a window nearby; neither choice is good, both have elements of harm when you are trying to provide safety. You don't get long to debate it with yourself. Can you carry the child down three flights, hold your breath and make it before the stairs collapse or can you pass the child out the window and drop it or do you jump holding the child. Decide. Now.

You can only work with what you have at hand. Sometimes you really do have nothing to work with and you have to make the call anyway.

If all the choices are bad, you still have to pick one and go with it. Then you deal with what results come from it.

You jump, holding the child to cushion the fall because there is no one to catch if you toss it. Broken ankles, arms, legs, feet, back, concussion, death; it's all there to discover in the next few seconds. Maybe you get lucky and the ground is soft, you just knock the wind out of both of you. You can't know until you jump.

But there is no good way to go. That is how it will seem to you. Hold still and wait isn't an option in that kind of situation. You have to make a decision.

Life brings us to places where we may have no good choice to make sometimes. It's down and dirty, low and hard. It is what it is.

Feed the kids, get gas for work, buy a beer, pay the rent all with the same dollar you don't have. You choose. You work with what that choice brings you.

Pay half the rent, get the kids a pound of burger, skip the beer, siphon gas from a neighbor or borrow to get some. It can be done. But none of them are really good choices to have to make. They are made in a million homes everyday.

If you are standing in a place with no good choices, there are no words I can give you to ease your decision. I have looked at it in my life, done the best I could figure out and lived to move on.

But I am feeling a little more forgiving of myself when I look at what I decided and what was available to choose from. There was no good way to go, but I kept going. Everyone made it. Not easily, not always happy about it, but we made it and we still love.

I didn't do so bad after all. I'm still living and loving. I'm going on.

Thank you friend, for the thought that in a place with no good choices the ones I made worked good enough.

And this thought comes from yours. When you have no good choices you are blessed if you have friends who will help you through them and love you whatever you choose.

By helping one another even the darkest day can hold love in it's gloom. Keep reaching out and caring and sharing and the choices will get better for those you have helped. Together we can do it, alone we can all stumble to a stop.

Holding a hand and moving on with a friend is what love is all about. The divine unity is when the last takes the hand of the first and the circle contains all of us.