I love science fiction, growing up I read a lot of it. And I watched a lot. I’m a huge Star Trek fan, just about all of the franchise, and I love X-Files, The Twilight Zone, Fringe. One plot that occurs often in just about any series is one where a character is confronted with a choice, go left or go right, and because it’s fiction we can see the consequences of each choice. He goes right and hits another star ship and his ship explodes, killing everyone, flash, time goes backward and he has the opportunity to make another choice, this time he goes left and just misses the collision and everyone is okay. It would be nice if life worked that way, if you could rewind a bad choice and make another one with better consequences.
I remember working with people who so feared making the wrong choice they couldn’t make a decision and they would dance around the choice, but that never works, especially when a decision must be made. I think this concept is on my mind because of the new year. The start of a new year always seems like a good place to take stock and make decisions. It’s time to go through the closet and decide what I really need and what I can give away. Ditto the pantry, I need to go through that and toss all the fattening, unhealthy food away. And books, I need to thin out the book shelf, donate the books I’ve read and don’t need to keep. Is there anything I need to add to my life right now or is it all about removing the clutter? (I guess if you saw my desk you’d say it’s all about removing the clutter.)
Right now, at this stage of my life, I don’t see any earth shattering-scary-intimidating choices on the horizon. Nothing that I’d want to set up in a science fiction time machine to change if it doesn’t go right. Is that good or bad? It could change. If I’ve learned anything in 53 years, life can change on a dime and not always for the best. All the more reason to make the best decisions I can at this point in time. So it’s on to the closet, the pantry, the bookshelf, whose afraid of hard choices? Not me, at least, not right now.