indecision

I recently received news that my school is closing at the end of February. This is unexpected and puts me in a tight spot. I really liked this job, and was counting on returning home at the end of August. Now my options are to return home at the end of February, or to find another school and sign on for another year.

I had an interview today. Well I say interview, but in actuality the first question asked to me was, "Can you sign the contract now?" This was before I'd even been shown the contract. I didn't exactly have to charm them into offering me the job. I told them I would think about it over the weekend, and get back to them on Monday.

I'm the worst decision-maker you'll ever meet. It baffles me how people are able to make decisions. Aren't you constantly nagged by the thought of what else might be? Aren't your thoughts constantly in flux, and racing back and forth from pro to con, con to pro? How are you able to step back and look objectively at things and ensure that reason- not emotion- is guiding you? How can you ever be sure? In the past five minutes alone I've swung back and forth 10 times on whether to sign on or go home. And each time I go back and forth I'm genuinely convinced, for a few sublime seconds, that this decision is best. And then doubt seeps in and I begin swinging the other way.

I walked home from the interview, took about an hour, in an attempt to sort through this decision. In thinking about my life I kept coming back to this image of being tangled up in ropes and fastened to the ground- like how the Lilliputians had Gulliver subdued. Now, I know that that's not the kind of image you want coming to mind when evaluating where you are in life. But the longer I've been here the more tangled up I've gotten, and the harder it has gotten to extricate myself from Korea. Some of these ropes are thicker than others, obviously, such as certain relationships. Another rope you might've forgotten about, such as my reliance on health insurance and affordable health care in the ever-looming chance that my body tries to kill me again. Even small ropes, like my cell phone contract, which while not strong enough to keep me here on its own, are still burdensome when combined with all the rest.

I had this image in my head and I was thinking about how you could go about getting out of those ropes. I concluded that chopping off your limbs would probably help. Now, this analogy is dangerously close to veering off a cliff and into a melodramatic abyss, so suffice to say that any decision comparable to amputation should be made as carefully as possible.

The last time I felt this tormented about a decision was when wrestling with whether or not to come to Korea in the first place. That was over five years ago now. I was on the same swing of uncertainty, going back and forth for about a year between, "Do it, this is exactly what you need!" to, "Are you out of your mind?!" What finally swung me one way for good was that, after fruitlessly applying for hundreds of jobs, I had applied for one more that should've been a gimme. It was for a job as a courier in Wilmington, something I'd even had experience at doing. I had an interview and it went well. And while it was certainly far from ideal, at least it was something. Then a few days after the interview I got a letter in the mail telling me I didn't get the job, and looking back I might've gone slightly mental for a bit. I was exasperated in every way. Four months later I was in Korea.

I try not to interpret happenstance as signs from on high. I just don't think that's how it works. But not getting that job felt like a shove in another direction, which has ultimately led me to this spot, here, sitting in this apartment typing this post, which is certainly of interest to no one but me, and probably should just be kept to myself. It's possible that I'm expecting a similar shove to let me know when it's time to come back.

All those things to which you wish to attain sooner or later, you can have now if you do not refuse them. If only you will take no notice of the past and trust the future to providence, and direct the present in harmony with piety and justice. In harmony with piety in that you may be content with the lot that is assigned to you. For nature designed it for you, and you for it. In harmony with justice in that you may always speak the truth freely, and without disguise, and do the things that are agreeable to law, and according to the worth of each. And let neither another man's wickedness hinder you, nor opinion, nor voice, nor any persuasion of the flesh, for let that which suffers look to itself. If then whatever the time may be when you shall be near your departure, you shall respect only your ruling faculty and the divinity within you, neglecting everything else. And if you are afraid, not that you shall someday cease to live, but that you will never have begun to live according to nature. Then you will be a man worthy of the universe which has produced you. And you will cease to be a stranger in your native land, and to wonder at things which happen daily as if they were something unexpected, and to be dependent on this event or that.

That's from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and it's occurring to me now that I might be over-thinking all this.