Perfect Choice copyright 1987 by Tracy Marks Enmeshed in the strands of a dozen alternatives, unable to select one path when so many paths intersect, I have sat for hours here at this resting place, examining and evaluating each option before me, searching for the minute evidence which would enable me to make the perfect choice. But when I am unable to find that evidence, when the answers are unknown or unreachable, and one question depends upon another which depends upon the first, I know that I remain paralyzed at this crossroads not because of want of evidence, but because I am unwilling to expend the energy to choose and act upon my choice. For the source of meaning now lies not in the right decision but in the commitment to one action, one person, one path. No path reveals its end at its beginning. A pump must be primed, a fruit must be allowed to ripen, and I, a climber of inner Everests, must follow one path to its conclusion in order to discover that the sweat and struggle climbing can imbue any choice with value, more than days and months and years attempting to make the perfect choice.

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