Feelings and your heart – do you fight them to make better choices or do you follow them and take what history has taught you are the wrong chances?

Today I had to struggle to make what my friend called a “cerebral” choice. I have always very much been one to put myself out there in order to pursue what I want, even if sometimes it ends somewhat unsatisfyingly. I believe that making the wrong choices sets you up to be appreciative when something good comes along. As people, we have all – to some degree – taken the plunge, taken a chance for something we believe in, sometimes to our own detriment. My choices have always been set so deeply in “the pattern” that I don’t know how to make any other choices. I’ve come to revel in the pain and the twin pleasure that comes as part and parcel of “the pattern”. But inevitably, what is rotten cannot survive and must fall away to allow for new and better things. And so now I stand (figuratively), trying my darnedest to make a good solid choice for future Janet, trying to choose what I believe is the “right” choice, the sensible one, even though my heart yells at me and tells me that I really want “the pattern” instead. It rages in its cage, wanting out but dare I remove the padlock I have placed on it?

Ultimately, the question that underlies my internal dilemma is whether I go for what I want now or what I should want in 5 years. Like a magpie, my head is turned by flashy objects. I remind myself that beauty which exists on the surface will come to fade, that the shiniest penny will eventually dull with age. Once again, Einstein’s definition of insanity mocks me as I consider returning to the pattern…