Les Douces

Today I’ve been thinking about choices.

What does choice even mean?

choice /tʃɔɪs/ {noun} “The act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities.”

So basically, in every moment of our life, we get to choose.

To choose who to love.
To choose what to eat.
Who to work with.
Where to live.
How to dress.
Who to spend our time with.
What to read.
What to listen to.

It’s endless.

Every single day begins with a choice.
Ten more minutes of sleep or getting up with the sun?
Washing my hair or embracing the messy bun?
Coffee or tea?

And in between those seemingly small decisions, we’re constantly shaping the bigger picture: how we live our lives.

Isn’t that kind of crazy?
Or at the very least, wildly powerful?

I get to choose every day how to live my life.
What a freedom that is.

But then why do so many people feel like they don’t have a choice?

I hear it all the time.
Friends who say they can’t leave the relationship that ended long ago. Who can’t quit the job that drains them. Who can’t set boundaries in family dynamics that are quietly suffocating.

And I get it. I really do.

Not everyone lives their life in a let’s say privileged way.
Some choices feel heavier than others.
When someone says, “I need to go to work in order to pay my rent,” I understand. We all need to survive.

You might not get to skip work entirely, we all need to pay our bills but you do get to choose:

A high-paying job in a toxic environment that drains your soul,
or a modest salary surrounded by kind, like-minded co-workers where your nervous system gets to exhale.

Or maybe you even choose to skip traditional employment altogether because you’d rather build something of your own than work for someone else.

That’s a choice too. One that sets everything else in motion.

The options aren’t always perfect. But still: there are options.

Then there’s love.

People say you don’t get to choose who you fall in love with and that’s true.
Love can hit you like a wave, unexpected and irrational.
But still, love is also a choice.

Choosing to show up for each other.
Choosing commitment, even when things get hard.
Choosing to keep holding hands when life gets messy and confusing.
Choosing to build a life together even knowing love might shift, fade, evolve.

For so many years, I moved through life waiting to be chosen.

Waiting for the man to choose me, so I’d know I was lovable.
Waiting for the job to choose me, so I’d feel good enough.
Waiting for the friendship to choose me, so I’d feel seen and valuable.

But I never really asked myself:
How would I choose? Would I even choose him?
Would I want that job if it wasn’t chasing me?
Would I say yes to these connections if I trusted my own voice?

It was a quiet system I had unknowingly subscribed to where I forgot I had a say.

Looking back at my 23-year-old self, she always had the power to choose. She just didn’t know it back then.

Everything is a choice, in the end.
Is it a good one? A bad one? Will you regret it?

Maybe.
But if you never make the choice, you’ll never know.
And that, to me, is the real risk.

Because the truth is:
You get to choose how to spend every second of your day.
How to show up in love, in work, in life.

And when you realize that?
It really does change everything.