Personal Finance: Lifestyle Inflation
Recently a friend linked me to an article by Amy Chan, the adorable author of www.amyfabulous.com. The piece is titled “My Very Own Choose Your Own Adventure” and the point she pushes is that there is no "correct" way to do things. She compares the facets of life to the adventure books in which you pick a path and you go with it, all the while aware of the opportunities for different avenues you’re passing up. The article shifts quickly to applying this method of thought to love *cue your doom .wav of choice*.
Chan (or Fabulous) preps the reader by telling the story of how she once had a mutual connection with someone who was unavailable, but dude chose to stay with the person he was already committed to. To answer the inevitable question, How can you love someone and still connect with someone else? she writes:
Well, I think you can fully love and respect your partner, but still naturally connect with others…But there comes a point when you realize that temptations and different connections will always exist, but at some point you have to make a choice – and with faith, stay true to that decision.
What is important is that no matter which path you walk or which destination you land – you know that at the end of day, you walked each step true to your principles and values.
I enjoyed the article. I think it’s a very practical and logical way to look at love and life in general; although, I’m not so sure it leaves room for mistakes. You see, I read those choose your own adventure books when I was a kid, but the funny thing about it is I never stuck with one path. If I turned right instead of left at the roaring river and my boxcar ended up in a ditch, my body broken and bruised, I didn’t close the book and flick on the television. I flipped a few pages back, turned left and ended up in a magical field full of flowers, ponies and million dollar bills.
Real time: It’s not that I have commitment issues, or lack faith in my decisions. In fact, when I commit I do it with such fierce passion that everything else, every other possibility, melts away. This means I’m careful about what I commit to, and if I start walking in one direction and am not completely satisfied with what I see or feel in the distance, I turn around. I think at the end of the day that's what it’s about: dog-earing crucial moments in life and making sure that where you go from those points feels true to you. Because if it feels true and right, I think you will love wherever you end up wholeheartedly, and the possibilities of where you could have gone instead will fade away, and connections you make in the future will be deeply appreciated yet nowhere near as bright. Call me naive if you want, but I honestly think that if you genuinely believe in what you commit to, every other possibility will pale in comparison to the achievements you make based on that commitment.
A friend and I--coincidentally the same friend who linked me to Chan’s article—had a severe falling out several years ago. And when I say “severe” I mean batshit crazy horrible FUBAR insane. It resonated with me, of course, and throughout what I like to call The Lost Years I often found myself returning to the last time we saw each other and wondering what I could have done differently. For a long time it remained one of the very few points in my life that, if they were illustrated on a time line of Chelsi, would be represented by a question mark. And maybe a sad face or two.
And this is the real kicker (ESPECIALLY when it comes to matters of the heart) because while you have total control over your adventure in an adventure book, there are things in real life that require more than just your will to change. Often times other people are involved, and their values and priorities will likely be different from your own. In regards to the love that never was, Chan herself writes: “…it is interesting to consider, what could have been if he had made a different choice. We would probably be the main characters together in our Choose Your Own Adventure book.”
My FUBAR friend and I became friends again last week, and I'll admit that in this particular case I lucked out. I'll be forever grateful that things worked out the way they did, but the circumstances were such that had he not made the choice to go back and help me lift my boxcar out of the ditch, I’d have no choice but to close the book and begin another. This idea of acceptance and moving forward with faith when there are no other options, is for me, the point Chan's article hits the hardest, though she doesn't say it outright.
We have to accept the things we cannot change because if we don’t we’ll pine over them forever. And at the same time, we have to have faith in our right to dive back into the things we can change, especially if we’re still haunted by possibilities of what could have been. Doing so improves the quality of life, and anything that serves that purpose, in my book, is being true to my principals and values.