Cutting onions and taking chances

Dear Miss Kitty,
I have been with my boyfriend for 6 years, since I was 19. Nothing is really wrong with us, I just think I need to experience a bit more of life before I settle down. The thing is I am scared I am making a mistake by moving on since he really is a great guy, but on the other hand, I don’t want to get 10 years down the road with any regrets. How can you decide without making a mistake?
Lisette


Dear Lisette,
When preparing an onion for cooking, you can have a variety of experiences. You can just lay into the fragrant orb, cleaver-a-whirling and depending on the onion, cry a little or cry a lot. You can chill the many layered veggie to reduce the possibility of its eye smarting noxious fumes, or you can buy it pre-chopped and frozen and escape the possibilities of tears altogether (good-bye connecting with your potential culinary genius). The most important thing to note is that regardless of what you do, there are more possibilities than you could ever have imagined in terms of the actual experience, but in the end, experience and tissues aside, you end up with a mound of chopped, diced or sliced onion.

When deciding on life’s various paths, we walk the walk of the onion, not the onion chopper. For the onion is unlimited in its layer upon layer of translucent possibilities. Gently and slowly peeled, abruptly severed to get to the next step as quickly as possible, or growing right out of the cooking pot and into a healthy little plant waving in the wind.

There are no rights or wrongs here, just different choices. The part of the choice that keeps you grounded and lets you know that - although difficult or fraught with feelings - it is the correct one for you, is when you take the time to feel and sit with your decision, whatever it is. Making decisions based on the possibilities for the future is sensible when it comes to investing in the stock market, but makes little sense when it comes to emotional investments. You can only really know without-a-doubt where you are and how you feel today, in the present moment after much self-reflection.

Darling Lisette, Boys and Girls, being in a place where you are wrestling with a decision based on the possibility that you will miss out on something that has yet to be, is a good indication that change is imminent in one form or another. How you choose to conduct yourself in regards to your personal behavior is as important as the actual decision itself. Maybe more so. There is no need to know all the answers before you proceed and that's a good thing-since you can never have the whole enchilada anyway. Let the events unfold like peeling layers of an onion as you gently find your way toward resolution. Remember that with change always come strong feelings that, although uncomfortable, you are better off really experiencing – instead of chilling them or hiding under packaging so as not to feel them deeply and fearfully avoid the inevitable tears. Food for thought?

There are countless decisions that can be rescinded upon reflection and review and there is nothing wrong with admitting you made a mistake. In the course of searching for something better-we try on clothes, relationships and governments-to see if they fit. Sometimes change works and sometimes it doesn't. Rarely does the glass slipper fit the first time.
Have a naughty day!