The Choices We Make

Ray and I are a good example of the ‘opposites attract’ theory. He’s friendly and talkative, I’m quiet and reserved. He’s fit and active, I’m more cerebral (my sister’s reading this thinking, “she means lazy”…which is fair).

When it comes to everyday life, Ray’s a doer and I’m more of a thinker. He’s energetic and disciplined and gets stuff done. A LOT of stuff. I research ideas and make lists and plan to do things, but I lack follow-through.

With riskier life-changing decisions, Ray and I reverse roles. He becomes the thinker and planner and I get stuff done.

Ray’s more comfortable with predictability and routine and dislikes uncertainty. Left to his own devices, major decisions would be put on hold while he weighed the pros and cons and waited for the ‘perfect’ time to make a change. 

I fear monotony and thrive on change and spontaneity, so I’m usually ready to jump in with both feet without giving it a second thought. Left to my own devices…well, let’s just say that the last time I took a spontaneous solo trip to Spain, I lost my car and ended up in the back of a police car in the Spanish countryside unable to communicate with the nice officers or ask them where they were taking me. 

Our differences balance each other off. When I spend days researching sailboats and then announce that I’ve found the perfect boat on which we can sail around the world, Ray points out that before heading out to sea we need to learn how to sail and navigate and maybe try sailing on open water first and blah, blah, blah…I’ve lost interest by that point. I say, “Let’s jump” and he makes sure we’re wearing parachutes before we do.

In June, when he said, “I think it would be nice to live in a small town like Brighton where we could walk into town and be closer to family, it was more an idea than a plan. Implicit in that statement was ‘someday’. Despite having given no prior thought to the idea myself, I started checking out real estate listings and having our house assessed (just to see, of course). A week later our house was on the market. And that’s how ‘we’ decided to move.

I’m oversimplifying a bit. There was some discussion involved, but it’s easy to question afterwards whether we made the right decision. My answer is that there is no ‘right’ decision. There’s just choices and they all have pros and cons and we don’t know where any of the paths will take us. That doesn’t sit so well with Ray who’d like a little more assurance that we haven’t made a huge mistake by deciding to move further away from all our wonderful friends and neighbours in Ottawa. 

It’s hard to make a change when there are so many things we love about our life here, but I’m holding on to my life philosophy, which is embodied in this quote that I’ve already shared at least a couple of times in previous posts (so I’ll cut it down a bit):

Monotony collapses time; novelty unfolds it. … Creating new memories stretches out psychological time and lengthens our perception of our lives.

Joshua Foer, Moonwalking with Einstein

All that said, in between purging and packing, we’ve been seeing friends and feeling all the feels that go along with that. We have to keep reminding ourselves that we’ll only be three hours away. 

Last weekend a couple of our friends hosted a wonderful get-together with ‘the gang’ at their beautiful home on the Madawaska River.

Perfect weather and locale for a pandemic-era party

A waterside bar and live music to listen to from the dock. Doesn’t get much better than that.

We’re very fortunate to be able to share food, wine, music and laughter with such wonderful friends.

Just three hours away…no biggie.

Six weeks until moving day.