Making the Right Choice

All these reflections on the transformational power of choosing can veer into an apology for an inflated sense of self-importance and control. We can slip into a sense of entitlement where we begin to think that if we’re clear enough and choose wisely, our lives will be smooth and pleasant.   Or we take the good fortune of our current circumstances to be something that we have earned through our enlightened choices and hard work.

Here’s a true story that illustrates that our choices may not be as important as we think.

Many years ago, a friend introduced me to a new mountain bike trail loop. It was a lovely ride—five or six miles of winding trails through woods and pastures, over hills and through valleys. I rode the route with him two Saturdays in a row. The next week I decided to try it on my own.

Everything began fine—I remembered the familiar landmarks and enjoyed being my own company on the narrow forest paths. Then I reached a fork in the trail that I didn’t remember. Did we go left or right here? I couldn’t remember.

I was just a little nervous. But I paused, took a couple deep breaths and tuned in to my deeper intuition. Left felt like it was the right direction to go, so I took the left fork and rode on. Things soon looked familiar and I was at ease again. Until it happened again a second time. An unfamiliar fork in the trail. Again I was a little nervous, but found my inner equilibrium, trusted my intuition and rode on.

I was delighted and just a little proud of myself when I completed the loop back where my car was patiently waiting. Instead of panicking when I didn’t remember, I had paused, trusted, and found my way to some deeper kind of knowing. A good life lesson, I thought.

A week later, I rode the same trail again by myself. This time I decided to be adventurous. At the first fork, instead of going left, I went right. And to my surprise, after a short while, I was back on the same trail. At the next fork in the trail I did the same thing. Again, to my surprise and delight, this other fork also led back to the main trail.

I arrived back at my car that day with a revised sense of my own self-importance. It was not my deep powers of intuition that had served me, but rather the path itself that had taken care of me. The correct answer was both right and left. I realized that the only way I could have failed would have been not to choose.

I’m reminded of the wonderful adage ‘You can’t steer a parked car.’ When the car is motionless, playing with the steering wheel has no impact on the direction of the car. Sometimes, the most important thing is simply to get the car moving. Even if you are headed in the exact wrong direction, when the car is moving, you can eventually turn it in the direction you want.

Perhaps the choices we agonize over are not what they appear to be. Sometimes there is a clear choice, one option that ‘makes sense.’ But other times we have to make decisions without enough information, we can’t know how things will turn out. What if all our choices lead us back to the main trail? What if many choices are not a matter of right or wrong, but rather simply moving into the future? What if our lives are not just a matter of ‘getting it right?’

My teacher’s teacher, Zen Master Seung Sahn, once had a student come to him who was trying to decide whether to stay in the monastery or go back to graduate school. Seung Sahn listened patiently to his troubled listing of all the reasons to stay and all the reasons to go. Then Seung Sahn said in his pigeon English: ‘You got coin? Flip coin and do what coin says.’

Daily Practice: As you move through your day, be aware of some of the choices you are making. Notice when you feel the pressure to make the ‘right’ decision. What if all your choices led to your one true life? What if there is more freedom to choose than you think? Once or twice today, see what happens if you take the ‘other’ trail and choose to do something you don’t usually do. Notice what happens.