The Giver

I am doing book clubs in my 6th grade "gifted" class and one of the books we are doing is The Giver. I finished the book the other day and found it quite thought provoking. There is one particular passage I seem to resonate with:

"All of it was new to him. After a life of Sameness and predictability, he was awed by the surprises that lay beyond each curve of the road. He slowed the bike again and again to look with wonder at wildflowers, to enjoy the throaty warble of a new bird nearby, or merely to watch the way wind shifted the leaves in the trees. During his twelve years in the community, he had never felt such simple moments of exquisite happiness.
But there were desperate fears building in him now as well. The most relentless of his new fears was that they would starve.....Jonas remembered, suddenly and grimly, the time in his childhood when he had been chastised for misusing a word. The word had been 'starving.' You have never been starving, he had been told. You will never be starving.
Now he was. If he had stayed in the community, he would not be. It was as simple as that. Once he had yearned for choice. Then, when he had had a choice, he had made the wrong one: the choice to leave. And now he was starving.
But if he had stayed...
His thoughts continued. If he had stayed, he would have starved in other ways. He would have lived a life hungry for feelings, for color, for love."

There are nights, particularly when I am alone with my thoughts, I have struggled with the choices I have made in my life. So many bad choices! The one I struggle with the most is leaving my marriage. I have chosen a life of single motherhood, and at times I feel the eering starving feeling for companionship. But if I had stayed.... Yes, if I had stayed, I, like Jonas, would have starved in other ways. I would have lived a life hungry for freedom, for self-discovery,  for self-strength and for self-respect and as Jonas; for feelings, for color and mostly for love. What kind of companionship would it have been if I can't be true to who I am and free to make my own choices? Yes, I have made a lot of wrong choices, but those wrong choices have led me to a new place where I look at the world in awe as it is full of surprises that are around the corner on the path that I am walking now: Two wonderful children, a great fulfilling profession, great friends and finding out who I really am! I suppose I would want to live in a world where I am free to have choices, rather than have a world of Sameness and predictability, even if the risk of those choices may bring pain, suffering and regret. Life after all is a risk!