From Diana’s Grove:

You might want to help me even if I am doing what I want to do and I need help. You might join me because you want to do this job with me and your choice is based on the work that we can do together rather than my state of being. And mutual desire might even be a more rewarding basis for our working relationship than desperation.

If I act from choice, then you will only be involved with me based on your choice. I give up the wondrous power of guilt, shame, and being controlled by desperate circumstances beyond my control.

There is great vulnerability in choice. There is great vulnerability in being powerful or empowered. Neither my honesty about having chosen my life nor the truth that I am a powerful and effective person condemns me to live in a world, alone, without help or need for help. Knowing that I choose, that I do as I will, simply let’s me see myself as accountable for the direction of my life.

I am accountable and the whole world is fluid. My deepest personal philosophy is based on choice, not absolute truth. I am accountable, if not for my fortune and my misfortune, for my continuing involvement in my fortune or misfortune. Choice – if you choose, can imply responsibility but not blame.

Choice does not change reality, only our relationship to it. Choice doesn’t simplify the world, it makes it ultimately more complex. If I am going to think of myself as a being with choice, I need to know what my choices are… I need to know the nature of things that are completely independent of me.

You are independent of me. I may choose to be in a relationship with you and I may choose not to be in a relationship with you, but I can’t choose who you are. How do I choose? I have to talk to you, and listen to you. I have to accept your definition of who you are and add to that my experience of you. I have to communicate, discern, choose and respect your choices. This boulder is getting heavier.

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