Choosing Harder

We chose to send our kids to schools that seemed good for them. Which was good, but gave us years of three different schools and transportation that sometimes made us cross-eyed.
 
I chose to stay at One Life to Live until the day that it finished. Which was sad and satisfying and depressing and fantastic, but gave me months and months of trying to start all over.
 
We chose to stay in the city rather than move out and adjust to new schools and a commute. Which gave us all sorts of opportunities, but was expensive, and just got more so.
 
We chose to explore all sorts of colleges. Which left, and is leaving, all sorts of options, but will make the admissions process far longer than the one people with just one choice will experience.
 
We chose to foster independence and decision-making skills in our kids. Which, I believe, will make them stronger people in the world, but which comes with a lot of bumps and requires a lot of patience along the way.
 
It's not that all our choices are hard. It's just that sometimes, the choices we make come with hard consequences. We can choose to make things simpler from the start. Or--and I like this version better--we can simply accept that choices have consequences, and keep making the harder choices anyway.