If you could spend one year in perfect happiness but afterwards you would remember nothing of the experience, would you do so? If not, why? ~ The Book of Questions
No road trip is complete without a thorough soul-searching tour of the Book of Questions. Answering the questions is a cutesy way to gain a better understanding of your poor, trapped-like-a-rat co-pilot, and like any other car game it is a good way to pass the time. Well the book of questions is no game. No, no…no game at all. It should come with a warning that says, “Someday you will grow up and these questions won’t be a cutesy game, sister…they will be your real life and it.will.suck. Surpise! Joke’s on you!”
So thank you, Life, for making the Book of Questions my reality. Choose one: greatest love vs. dream job. You get to be madly, passionately crazy over precisely one of them, so choose and choose wisely, because there are no second chances.
I tried for a while to make no choice – ha, Life, suck on that! However, Life ain’t no dummy. Life upped the ante and gave him the same option (the job or the girl). Which leaves me with no guaranty that he will pick me, even if I do pick him. AND if we do both pick each other does it even work? If I don’t pick him, won’t I be stuck wondering about him indefinitely???
The answer is yes. As I get up and head off to my dream job, I will wonder about him.
So I propose we change the title of the book from “The Book of Questions” to “The Book of This Is A Practice Test For Real Life and How Bad It Is Going to Suck Because the Questions Will Be Real and You Will Be Stuck With Your Answer, and Though Your Life Will Still Be Fabulous Because You are Fabulous and Work Really Hard to be Successful, You Will Always Have to Occasionally Wonder Did I Make the Right Decision and Then Force Yourself to Do Some Productive Work or Laugh With Good Friends So That You Forget That You Ever Had to Make a Decision in the First Place Book.” My proposed title truly conveys the true purpose of the book. To join in my name changing efforts, please send letters of support to:
Workman Publishing Company
225 Varick Street
New York, NY 10014-4381
212-254-5900 (phone)
212-254-8098 (fax)
I blame “The Book of Questions” for the very question you raised, as it has defined my life. Work or love, choose one. I think I chose right. But is it possible to pick again? A paycheck is never big enough to wrap its arms around you.
There’s a trick – there is no wrong answer. After 14 years, I FINALLY just a few weeks ago figured out that the “one that got away”, my true, only real love, the one I would/should have married and will “never” get over, is, as it turns out, just a guy. I just spent 1.5 decades romanticizing the past and imagining a false image. I found a picture of his wife and 2 kids and, not surprisingly, she was unattractive and uninteresting. That’s when it hit me – he’s just a regular guy with a regular life now. What we had WAS amazing – then and there. It kept me from enjoying the here and now for a long, long, long time. Since letting go of the Questions, I have been able to adore the One I’m With Here and Now, the real guy who has now been sharing a home and a life and multiple dogs with me for almost a year. Bye bye to fantasy boy of the past and the imagined present/future. Change the punctuation and the Book of Questions becomes your personal Book of Answers.
Just remember, things are not always as you remember them, and time and distance allow lots of secrets. Look to where you ARE and focus on it.