New Choice!

WARNING: This post, (actually probably most of my posts), contains a swear word. I really like using swear words. I put a star in the middle of it, which really does nothing to hide the fact that it is a swear word at all. Apologies if this offends you.

I’ve been thinking about choices, and how being a kid was at times baffling and frustrating in that regard. I loved to be angry when I was told that I couldn’t do something, relating to my physical ability or otherwise, there was this exhilarating feeling of defiance and self-righteousness: no bare feet outside (yeah right), no ice-cream before dinner, no, you can’t do ballet or tumbling because you’ll break a leg, no hanging on the lane lines, etc. IT IS ALL SO UNFAIR, right? It can be a lot easier to sulk around and feel oddly satisfied at being wronged when someone says “You are prohibited from doing this and it is entirely out of your control” than it is to negotiate a response to “You have what you need to make an informed decision, there are risks and complexities, and ultimately you have to make the choice.” In the second scene, you have no one to blame but yourself if things are hard or unexpected or just bad.

Much of what I read and hear about improv relates it to childhood – to the experience of play and wily creativity and freedom from inhibition. But there are also ways in which improv is all about growing up. Adulthood and improv both push us to make bold choices and commit to them. To take the risks required to make the best of our choices, and to be humble and open enough to encounter their unexpected potential even when things seem to be going badly.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about the kinds of stories we celebrate as a society (a common channel of thought in my brains). Not too long ago, I remember swelling with vicarious pride and achievement whenever I’d read or hear one of these ‘inspiration’ stories about someone who paid no mind when their doctor told them not to do something – they did it anyway and look at them now, a super-human athlete with no problems and an unrealistically hot bod (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch the Olympics or read almost any magazine). If media coverage of disability were real life, apparently all you have to do to recover from injury is ignore your doctor, push through the pain (cause no pain no gain, right?), and go on an extreme raw-food diet. It is rarer to hear the more ambiguous and mediocre-sounding version of this story, where the protagonist slows down and considers what is being recommended to her. Where she gets sad and frustrated because her body is unpredictable and that’s largely out of her control, where she makes the hard decision to put off doing something she really wanted to do and makes plans to get back to it soon. I mean maybe in a Lifetime movie or something, but still rare.

(And even then, the story is aggressively glamorized and dramatized so that it seems tragic and not mediocre anymore).

So now my choice: I found out at another doctor’s appointment last Tuesday that Kenneth is more of a sh*t than anyone thought. The situation is more serious and complicated than I had accounted for; my doctor wants me to consider surgery or experimental treatment and definitely wants me to be in the country for continued appointments this summer and fall and year. So I chose to defer the Watson for a year. Luckily, the Watson foundation is amazing and supportive, and they were fine with deferring the fellowship until next summer. So, great things ahead, and also unpredictable and sometimes frustrating and unglamorous things, but that is how the story unfolds.

PS. Points to you if you get the title reference!

PSS. I just googled New Choice – to clarify, I mean the improv reference, not the pregnancy test reference…