Suit Yourself!

You are presented with a choice. Let’s say your spouse wants to go out to eat, and they offer you the options of three different restaurants. Your response could simply be, “Suit yourself.” Now, that could seem like you are avoiding making a choice or that you are trying to keep the peace with your spouse or that you are expressing the fact that you really don’t care where you eat because you just want to eat. But at the heart of your response is permission for your spouse to make the decision.

Many of our choices are like that. We’re free to select the option we like best. And we all have our preferences! Not only what foods we like to eat, but also how we prefer to drink our coffee. And not only what clothes we enjoy wearing, but how we like to be addressed. We have favorite sports teams and favorite hangouts and favorite relatives and favorite news stations and favorite genres of music and we do indeed like to suit ourselves when we can! But in our messy, limited human existence and somewhat civilized society, we cannot always suit ourselves.

We probably wouldn’t choose to voluntarily part with our money in paying taxes or supporting our dependents or insuring our vehicles or receiving medical services but we do even if it doesn’t suit us to do so. We certainly wouldn’t opt for illnesses and diseases and impairments that come our way as we walk this planet as it circles the sun. And not a one of us chooses our parents with their maddening DNA nor do we control the hour the sun rises to suit ourselves. Even in these United States of America where freedom rings, there will come a time in which few options are to be found and none of which suits us.

As we make choices and select options and please our preferences, we aren’t alone in a vacuum or on an isolated island. We are always entangled in webs of relationships and connections, even with others of our kind we don’t personally know. When we shop, our choices have repercussions. When we vote, our selections have consequences. When we commit ourselves to an organization or a person, we deny our support of and involvement with others. It’s a delicate dance really. Suiting ourselves isn’t always the best option for all. And we might easily feel put out about that. Or we might graciously accept that the webs of which we are a part work fairly well for us most of the time. Which suit will we choose to wear as we walk this planet circling the sun?