Some Notes on Decision-Making
Rachel Pollak is the Community Coordinator at St. Lydia’s. This is an excerpt from her weekly update to the community.
It seems a lot of people in our community are going through periods of heavy decision-making right now. Decisions about which careers to choose, which jobs to take. Where to live, how committed to be in relationships. I’ve been thinking about decision-making recently because it has been two years since my last graduation, and my internal graduation clock is telling me its that time again for upheaval and change and purchasing over-priced polyester black robes that stain your clothes when it rains. But I don’t have another one coming up—ever. On paper, it looks like I’ve come to the place in my life where, professionally anyway, I don’t have to make any big decisions—if I do nothing, than I will just keep doing what I’m doing now. Through my twenties, I’ve thought of this decade as being about making these big life decisions, and I think I’ve been operating under the assumption that by 30 (I’ll be 30 in August), I would be basically done with that gut wrenching, stress-inducing, heart-squeezing work of paring down the world of possibilities handed to me by my parents and my extraordinarily fortunate and opportunity-laden station in life to reveal my destiny—a well-balanced, successful, happy life. I would choose a career, a life partner, and a city to live in, and a haircut that really framed my face and suited my body type, and then I could put down my roots and get down to the business of really living my life.
Ummm….
This kind of statement can only be honestly followed by a moment of awkward silence, as this expectation of how my life would go confronts the reality of my life as it is today and they stare at each other, picking at their nails and toeing the ground and trying not to tilt their heads in confusion. Because of course, these two versions of my almost-30-year-old self are unrecognizable to one another. I have made some big decisions in my twenties, but that doesn’t keep me from waking up every day and wondering if I’ve made the right ones, or from being presented with new ones all the time.
The other day I had the opportunity to read something my mother wrote, a spiritual autobiography she worked on as part of a course in Building Your Own Theology at our Unitarian Church in Salt Lake City, UT, back when I was in high school, being a punk teenager who was totally oblivious to anything my mother was doing that didn’t involve handing over the keys to her minivan or trying to place real or perceived limits on my freedom in any way. And it was an amazing document to read, a gift in many ways that I won’t elaborate on here. But one thing it made me realize is that by the time my mom wrote it, she was in her forties, with two teenaged children, an accomplished career, and was already twenty one years into her marriage to my dad (now its been 36, yay parents!). But in those pages typed on what must have been an ancient version of WordPerfect, and no doubt printed on paper that had two perforated rows of holes on either side and made a sound like a cat dying as it printed out, she was still struggling with many of the same questions I, and many of you, are preoccupied with today. Where do I fit in to the world? What am I supposed to do with my limited time? What do I want to do? What are my responsibilities to other people? And I know from the wonderful talks we’ve been having lately that she still, in her early sixties, asks herself those questions.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have started the process of preparing for my baptism. As part of this process (I’m doing things my own way, Lord forgive me, because that’s the only way I know how to do things in this world unfortunately) I went yesterday to the International Center For Photography to look at an exhibit called Take Me to the Water, of photographs taken of early-twentieth century river baptisms. And as I looked at the picture-postcards of people of all ages, in all different fascinating states of dress and general comportment, standing in rivers all over the US (and at all different times of year! Some of the photos showed where they had literally chipped away at the ice to access the water for dunking. Yikes! I’ll wait for spring, thanks), I realized that deciding to be a Christian isn’t something I’m going to do once, in a white dress with flowers in my hair, with all my friends and family and Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch and George Clooney singing hymns on the banks of a canopied river (ok, I might have some unrealistic fantasies about what my baptism is actually going to look like). Its something, like all the other things about my identity that I hold most dear, that I will have to get up each day and decide to do again. Just like I have decide every day, over and over again, to get up and go be an artist. Just like people who are married to each other have to get up every day and commit themselves anew to the relationship, through all the changes, children, illnesses, successes and failures.
Jeez-Louise I’m exhausted already just thinking about it! But I’ve been spending a few minutes every day, as part of my Lenten discipline, sitting with my eyes closed and feeling God around me, in me, in the cracks and spaces between all the projects and ideas and fears and lucky breaks, just filling it all up and supporting it, being present with nothing specific in mind except love. This week I read some blog posts by our dear friend Ana Hernandez, which I highly recommend. I’d like to share with you a couple of things she said that have been helping me surrender myself to this sisyphean task of being a human in the hands of a loving God, and to be patient with myself and with others. She says, “I can only be gentle with you to the extent I am capable of being gentle with myself.” And also, “I try to love myself enough to love you, and to love you enough to be able to love myself (and vice versa). Some of us are better at one than the other, but spiritual growth requires the ability to soften to both self and neighbor and engage reality on its own terms.” I hope you can be patient with yourselves, dear ones, as you face the complexity of decision-making. And remember that the flip side of uncertainty is opportunity–there will always be more decisions to make, and there’s always help if you ask for it.