Choosing What Keeps Me Alive
There are moments when nothing is wrong—and still, a choice must be made. Not between good and bad, but between what is familiar and what keeps us alive. This is a field note on listening for that difference.
Change is frightening.
Not because it is wrong.
Not because something has failed.
But because it asks for movement without guarantees.
The known life—even when painful—has shape.
The unknown life does not.
Stepping into it requires faith, not belief.
Faith is not optimism.
It is staying present when there is no map.
I have noticed something important:
Nothing needs to be wrong for a choice to be right.
Sometimes the choice is not between good and bad,
but between what is familiar
and what allows breath to move freely.
Some lives are coherent even in their unhappiness.
Some stories hold together because they are known.
There does not have to be anything wrong with that.
And still—
I know what happens in me.
I know where my body opens.
I know where my voice steadies.
I know where life gathers momentum
instead of quietly receding.
This is not about rejecting a person,
a story,
or a past.
It is about choosing what keeps me alive
before the cost of staying becomes invisible.
I am not deciding from fear.
I am deciding from listening.
And listening, I’ve learned,
often asks us to walk forward
before certainty arrives.