Choices Shmoices

It’s  11:02 of the clock. We are finding ourselves in Frankfurt, surprisingly enough. The northwestern sky I spot from this here location is undecided whether to rain or shine.

I know the feeling.

Croissant or cheese straw for breakfast?

Coffee or plain old water?

Such were the early morning hurdles that needed overcoming. They were not necessarily super high but it is early days. I am sure there’s more to come. I can feel it.

And I ask myself: hurdles and their height (or obstacles if you will) – are they of the It’s all in your head-category? Take sports for example, the hesitant approach more often than not lets you falter altogether in front of whatever is to be jumped over and across. Courage! (or simply: get a move on!) – that was the heart-warming advice my gym teacher used to give.

Why anyone on earth would want to hurtle towards an obstacle ye high and what is more to try and leap to their possible death in order to get across it is beyond me. Well, perhaps death is a little too much but sprained ankles and twisted knees ain’t no laughing matter either.

Anyway, suffice it to say that for the last two years of school I was exempt from any jumping activities. Hurdles in particular. Plus my lack of enthusiasm for sports simply did not allow for gravity defiance and other such nonsense. Just because Jesus walked on water does not mean that one has to attempt the impossible – could be construed as being presumptuous, even blasphemous.

However, the main goal was achieved – no bloody hurdles for me.

But back to the point – hesitation, the dilly-dallying, the wavering when faced with the sheer unconquerable, the unscalable, the seemingly un-doable will make any obstacle into Mount Etna or something. Enter the doubts and boom! you are in for visualisations of doom, of failure and all around loser-dom. And - need I say - you fail, fear becomes truth, nay reality, you baulk (and stand IN FRONT OF the bloody hurdle). 

What if – crazy thought alert – we switched off that overly busy mind of ours, remain in the moment, no past, no future. Very Zen. VERY difficult!

Yet also truly the only way, after all the past cannot be changed, the future is unforeseeable.

All we have is that fleeting moment which we have got to make the best of, live it to the fullest to the best of our abilities.  

Ah, the sheer simplicity of it all! Were it not for our fear, our ego, our pride.

We cling to times gone by, moments lost, minutes past, long to get back to a time when all was golden. Oh how we wish we could… if only.

Similarly, we paint our future, sometimes rosy, sometimes black, we predict and guess and basically worry too much. 

Remaining in the here and now is complicated, even spoiled, by our fears, our ego, our pride – that being our true weakness.