How do we know when we reach our end? How do we know when we should change our strategy? Try something different? Look at life in a different way than we ever have? When do we let the small voices in our heads, quietly encouraging us to look elsewhere, have a real say? How do we know when it’s time to re-frame the problem and shift our perspective? How do we identify a time and place that is actually a defining moment, a crossroads of sorts? How do we know what the best past forward is, once we realize our idealized best path forward is no longer an option? When we are staring at a fork in the road, how do we know which way to go?

This is such an individual choice, a choice to be made uniquely between two partners, or single individuals. But, how in the world do we know when we should shift our approach, and how do we even start?

Today I’m thinking about our losses and our path to parenthood. The road we’ve walked in the last few years, the moments of calm, the good and the bad, and the unexpected twists and turns. Logically, I can map out all of choices, and I could do it with a pretty diagram or chart if I wanted to. I’m thinking about all of it. Yet, I realize my questions go well beyond just my current thinking. So instead, I am thinking bigger, and I ask, why isn’t there a road map to life’s challenges and hard moments? Why isn’t there a how to guide for each unique situation? Why can’t anyone tell us what to do next?  Why can’t the road be laid before us perfectly?

Honestly, I know the answer to this. Or at least, I know my answer to this. The reason there is no road map to these hard situation is simple. It’s painfully simple and obvious now that I think about it.

It’s life and life is unpredictable.

I do not believe our lives our pre-determined.

Rather I believe in choice and subsequent consequences.

I believe that the gift of being human is also its curse – we make our own decisions and we live with the outcomes. We are faced with choices, and for most of us, we make the best decision we can at the time.

Not all things are a guarantee, in fact, many things are not.

There cannot be a road map, or a list of possible scenarios to choose between with definite outcomes, or a spreadsheet evaluating the choices equally. Sometimes there is no right or wrong, or black and white. Sometimes, we must live within in shades of grey, and navigate our lives without any certainty for what tomorrow will bring.

As comfortable as shades of grey may make us, sometimes we have no choice but to navigate our way through the confusion and the multiple outcomes.

I guess, maybe, what matters more than the actual shade we choose, is how we handle the ultimate outcome when the outcome isn’t what we wanted or expected. It’s these moments in time that show us and the world our true character.

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