Choose Your Own Adventure: The Blessing and The Curse

My favorite choose your own adventure book was about searching the pyramids for treasure. At best, you ended up with the Pharaoh's riches; at worst, you ended up trapped in a dead-end tomb with no escape. But the best thing about ending up in that tomb with no escape was that you could simply go back to the beginning of the book, try harder not to lose your map and your flashlight, take the right tunnel instead of the left, and at least walk out unscathed. Over and over, you could choose until you found the right permutation of choices to achieve the best possible ending.

Perhaps it's this early love of revisionist choices that cripples me now. It's not so easy to go back to the beginning of the story and retool the choices to configure a better ending. There are professional, financial and personal implications for every "do-over." The threads of life get all tangled up during the criss crossing.

And yet, today, I was reminded on more than one occasion that choose your own adventure is still possible. The implications are there, yes. But if I shift my focus away from the details of what will happen, I realize that I can go back - or go forward - and find the right ending. I realized that I'm in the incredibly lucky position to have a supporting cast of characters at the ready, whichever way I choose. So that even if I end up in the dead-end tomb, there will be people who love me, who support me, who will have a flashlight handy to lead us out of the dark. And now that I know the ending, the curse of trying to determine how we'll get there.