Culpable by Joy Sullivan

I’ve always been haunted by choice. I want the city and the forest.

Freedom but also babies. A home and the open highway.

I love it when other people choose anything for me—dinner spots,

weekend plans, hiking trails. It’s one tiny decision I’m absolved

from making. To choose is to be culpable and as a former

evangelical kid, there are few things I hate more than being

culpable.

But being unable to choose becomes its own choice. When you

don’t decide, a decision still arrives.

Once I held the fleeting body of a farm cat newly struck on the

side of a busy Ohio road. He’d gotten frightened in the rush and

couldn’t pick which way to go. So he stalled and was hit by the

car in front of me. When I lifted the big body, shuddering and

warm, I felt him die in my hands. Awful as it was, I listened to that

heaviness. I knew it was a lesson. To decide is to survive.

I wrote a pep talk recently to myself on a bar napkin: no matter

which road you take, it will be both glorious and unbearable. Every

road is lonely. Every road, holy. The only error is not walking forth.

Yesterday, a friend in California, when giving me directions, told

me I could take the trail toward the tall pines or turn left and find

a field of poppies, growing gold and savage at the edge of the valley.

When I asked which to choose, she simply shrugged and said:

either way, it’s all heaven.

Culpable

I’ll admit I’m often in the same camp as Sullivan when it comes to making choices – I tend to want both rather than either /or. I’m a city dweller and yet, I’m never happier than when I’m in the country so I try to have both. I too love it when other people choose anything for me, relieving me of the responsibility of making small decisions, although I can’t say I feel guilty or in the wrong when I do make a choice. I’m just aware of the other options not taken.

But being unable to choose becomes its own choice. That I know to be true – a decision will be made for you with or without your input. This may have happened to you; it has to me. The poet tells us a story about a cat, killed hesitating while crossing a road. As she held him and felt him die, she understood the lesson to be this: To decide is to survive; hesitation may lead to the decision being taken for you.

Her pep talk strikes me as wise advice: no matter / which road you take, it will be both glorious and unbearable. The only thing that may find us accountable is not walking forth. In another story, she tells us a friend gave her directions for a walk, either through tall pines or a field of poppies. When she asked which she should choose, her friend casually replied either way, it’s all heaven. This sounds so right to me: Every / road is lonely. Every road, holy,