Can anyone make a choice based solely upon their own personal opinion? Are we not swayed by actions and events that by force of nature must confront us in life? I get so caught up in trying to seperate the threads that bind me to others, that influence my choice, that it is often easier to not choose at all. Simple move neither forwards nor backwards, and let others pass you on by as you sit within your self induced paralysis of decisions...I wish it could be so simple. But my mind is a fickle, anxious thing and must run around in circles til a decision is reached. Perhaps it is not just trying to figure out what others are trying to get you to do, but also...who wants to make the wrong choice? And with often so many things influencing your decisions, trying to find the right choice is like searching for that key in the swamp. But again, to try and not choose at all for fear of the wrong decision...it is not as easy as it sounds, for this wild mind.
But I have sat quietly for a long while, thinking, contemplating in my solitude. And I thought back to a moment than shined momentarily with that happy fuzzy feeling, that sense of something learned right...

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who loved to doodle and draw with the ink and quills. She loved all the neat little writing tools, the pots of ink and the sharpeners for the quills, the freedom and excitement in drawing whatever she liked. They were no special drawings, but they were important to her. And one day, she was drawing a self portrait, a picture which was even more important than usual. She wanted to get it just right, the way she saw herself inside her head. So she slowly drew the outlines and the clothes, the head and the arms in the typical crude, childlike fashion. But she was proud of the work, because to her it looked nice, and to her it was perfect. Until someone bumped her arm, and a line jumped from across the portraits arm. And she cried and cried, because it was ruined and they would say she had wasted precious ink. It wasn't going to be the pretty picture in her head no more, and there was no way to get that back. But after awhile she quieted down, and looked at it and began to finish what she could with a sigh. But, in doing so, she noticed she could change the lines...connect one here, add a bit here to the 'mistake'...and then, do the same on the other side...and it didn't even look so bad. It may not be the picture in her head anymore, but it was still right in its own way. In fact, maybe even better than the picture she had imagined. And she finished off that portrait with a sense of pride, because the mistake turned out to not be a mistake at all and everything was right in her world...

I think we often ignore the simple lessons we learn outselves as children, because new experiences and others influence pushes out the things we had thought were golden and true. Thats not good though, because sometimes it takes that naive and innocent spirit to truly understand things instead of confusing and confounding them with other ideals. Because, I've long forgotten that mistakes are not the end of the world-we can choose, and sometimes choose wrongly, because somehow the world keeps going on. And even, sometimes, things end up all the better for the mistakes that we choose...