Choosing the choices

In her blog entry today, Chicory set me to thinking about the all the choices we have. Or the number of choices we think we have .... or how we torture ourselves over the options that exist. I've certainly been known to revisit decisions and my long-ago choices way beyond the point of healthy analysis.

In our house, because we are at the relative beginning of this journey, the choices currently sound like this: "How many unmedicated cycles before an HSG?" (We suspect fallopian tube trouble in these parts / my parts.) Or, "How much should we do now (pay for now) before the open enrollment period and the possibility of better insurance in September?" And this one, "Will I spend all this money and be no closer to my baby, and wish I'd just spent it on adoption up front?" (Adoption was, for a long time, the way I thought I wanted to build a family. TTC is a newer passion, but the one we're indulging first. But because adoption doesn't feel like a consolation prize, or a second choice, to me, why haven't we started there?) Etc., etc.

Chicory's questions are different, as she tries to decide about a new opportunity after what she thought was the end of her own uterus' journey. But whatever the specific questions/choices, it seems that this process is full of dilemmas, and false dilemmas, and choices, or choices denied because of finances. And ample opportunity to cloud and to clarify our priorities. And torture ourselves. Then this blogger, in a comment on Chicory's post, posted a C.S. Lewis quote I'd never seen before:

Make your choice, adventurous Stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.
(The Magician's Nephew, C.S. Lewis)

And I'm so grateful for that wisdom. (Thank you, thank you.) We're where we are in this process. Where we are is where we are. And we're striking the bells we're striking. And I need to remind myself that I have permission to do that. I want to avoid wondering "what if" I hadn't tried this. But I also have to remind myself, that if striking a certain bell doesn't work out, I do not then get to beat myself up for it later.

(In a related aside, has anyone read this book? It's been recommended to me several times. Not at all about TTC. It's about consumer choice. But I wonder if it has anything interesting to say about how we paralyze ourselves with choices and by always trying to make the perfect choice, in this day and age when happiness is supposedly based on having many choices. Anyone read it? I think I'm about to order it ....)