It’s a brand new year, and regardless of whether or not you’re in the 2000 camp ( the new millennium starts now) or 2001 camp (it’s not until next year), the reality is that we’re writing a while new set of dates down. Not just one number is changed and not just two, but all of them. It’s something that hasn’t happened in any of our lifetimes.

Traditionally, new years have been times for resolutions. I don’t know if this year has brought more or less of them, if people have been more motivated or if the yearly ritual has gotten lost in the shuffle of everything else going on around us. Regardless of how many resolutions have been made (some of them new and some of them repeated each year), the very act of making them points to a fundamental belief: We have choices. We can change.

Perhaps it seems elementary, and yet so many times we act as if that wasn’t the case. I just can’t help it. My mother was that way. My dad was that way. I think it’s genetic. It’s because of how I was raised. If someone else (spouse, parent, child, significant other, boss, etc.) would just change, I would be fine. I really don’t have a choice. I wish I could do something different, but I can’t.

That’s what we tell ourselves at least. But the reality is that we always have many choices on many levels. The question isn’t really whether or not we have choices, but whether or not we’re willing to live with the consequences of the choices we make.

We may choose to do one small thing differently. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been taken with the grand, dramatic gesture. Doing one small thing differently doesn’t seem like it’s enough. And yet, it can have a powerful effect. Choosing to do one thing differently can break a cycle, whether it’s a thought pattern within our own heads or a pattern of interaction with another person. It may be a choice to allow for more than one interpretation of a situation. It may be to refrain from critical attacks, whether upon ourselves or another person. It may be to share with just one other person how we’re really doing. Sometimes the power of one small choice is that it breaks a pattern, and once the pattern is broken it loses its power. And sometimes the power of a small choice is that is opens the door for other choices, the whole things snowballing in a quite wonderful way.

We may choose to do a very large thing differently. Someone listens to the restlessness of his soul, and finally decides that neither his job nor his career are a good fit for who he is and what he wants his life to be about. And so he chooses to begin the process of making a change. They decide that they want their marriage to be more than just getting by and getting through, and so make the commitment to invest their time and energy in strengthening and improving the relationship. I see people after they have made a significant decision: That, for whatever reason, it’s time for them to enter into (or continue or return to) counseling.

We may choose what we do with our feelings. "He made me so angry." The anger may seem to be beyond our control, rising up unbidden and uninvited. But we have a choice as to what we do with it. Do we push it down and try to push it away? ("I’m not angry; I’m just hurt.") Do we lash out and attack the other (or anyone else who’s conveniently near at the moment)? Do we listen to the anger and its message, and then take whatever actions needed? Or do we nurture it into bitterness or rage? We have the choice.

No matter what life brings us, we have a choice. People have chosen to transform childhood wounds and created lives of great grace. Others have let those wounds fester for a lifetime, draining energy and joy and possibility. Actor Christopher Reeve, paralyzed in a fall, has chosen to live his greatly changed life to its fullest, even returning to work as an actor and director. Etty Hillesum was a Jewish young woman in the Netherlands during the time of the Nazi occupation and eventually died in one of the camps. And yet she wrote in her journal of her great freedom, that no matter how many freedoms the Nazis took away, they could never take away her ability to "fold two hands in prayer." She died as a prisoner of the camp and yet, because of the choices she made, she also died a free woman.

Too often when we say, "I just can’t" what we really mean is "I choose not to." We may chose to avoid the difficult road or the painful consequence. But in the end, it really is our choice.

© 2000 Peggy Haymes

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