multiple choice

[fflo]

susanstinson's cat Black Kitty died. She wrote of the loss in her blog. Sad.

I am put in mind of an old exchange with kind counselor I revisit often. The deft touch of it, along with its underlying point, impressed me even in the immediate aftermath of its occurrence.

Back a coupla years ago when things were in such turmoil for me, I found myself having many moments of worrying that my older cat was about to up & die---beyond what his health problems at the time merited. This channeling of fear, squirrely as it was, at first went towards practical questions, like what to do if the ground was frozen when such a thing would go down, even more than to underlying feelings along the lines of the (false) thought "I couldn't take it!" False cuz of course I could take it. I wouldn't want to take it, but, you know, when bad things happen, we take it. What else can we do, and how can we not do? The fact that life goes on, if it does, is sometimes a horror in its own way, but that doesn't undermine the factuality of the continuation, even if fear of some potential amorphous unbearability may abide right along with it.

Anyway, I'm digressing. The conversational snippet was me saying something like "I don't know how I could handle it," prompting her brilliantly simple nugget: "How would you want to handle it?"

Poof. Turned an "either-or" into the proper type of question, if a question had to be asked: multiple choice. You come up with the options; you influence the selection of answer or answers, to whatever extent you get to, or have to. Which, even if it's only a little, is something.

That moment was worth weeks of co-pays, easy. And now I give it to you, reader, gratis, fwi may be w to you. And just to note it again & celebrate it a little myself.

And it sounds like some of Susan's choices, in an actual aftermath, have been good ones.

Comments

Re: p.s.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i think that's part of the problem, as i may have explicitly mentioned to you (i know i did to tiramisu e): it would be ruefully ironic if all the people's people would be proven right (that this is too much, that it can't be done, that it's not worth the "suffering").

tiramisu e believes, as he always does and i do (obviously) on most days, that people's people don't know what they are talking about, which is probably true, as they've never seen anything and never tried anything.

it's also, again ironically, about being from a national literature in which nothing ever changes and nothing ever can. that i find to be a great burden.

Re: p.s.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

that WOULD be most ruefully ironic, i grant ya

you have me wondering which part of my national literature is most burdensome. i think i've got more than one option that way. and maybe that's it: the illusion of choice.

but, again, fog shrouds me noggin. 'sbeen that kinda day, brain matter wise speaking.

i like "people's people". i guess nontiramisu e, a.k.a. homovegetarian, will have her anthropological observation thereof soon, and (partly) in the forum of that venerable social institution of a hitchin'. oh to be a fly on the wall myself. (do people's people have such an expression?)

Re: p.s.

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

i think there might be either something quite similar (мува на зиду) or nothing at all. i'm not sure.

i would hate for the people's people to be right, being how hideous their lives are. their lives ARE hideous because they think the lives can't be any better and they never even try.