Alexandra Stoddard - Making Choices

Once I turned fifty, I began, as many of us do, to reflect on my life, to think about the choices Ive made that have brought me to where I am today. When I look at these decisions now, I realize that they constitute the threads of a personal philosophy; my choices have been my means of thinking through and dealing with the unfolding process of my life. They have affected every aspect of me and my world, and collectively they speak for the way I perceive the environment around me.

Ive reached a certain stage in my growth, in my maturing, that I feel is a fruitful period full of rich rewards and satisfactions. But with reflection and the insights it brings comes an understanding that everything changes and will always continue to change, even when, perhaps, we dont want it to. Its for this reason that I find myself focusing on and trying to make some sense out of what has happened so far on my journey; that is, I feel, the only way I can anticipate what will come next.

What I have come to see is that no matter how tough life can be, we can always keep our balance by concentrating on the choices that face us. It is always possible to choose, but being strong enough to do so is never up to anybody but us.

Until now, Ive been writing about beauty and design, about rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations. Ive rarely come out and addressed directly some of the hard issues we all have to confront from time to time. Though I have always emphasized the positive and fully intend to keep affirming it, with maturity Ive also become acutely aware of the pain and suffering we each experience. These are the topics I feel I have to write about now.

Over the years, I have been privileged to find warm and extraordinarily articulate readers. I am at once grateful for and stunned by the volume of mail I receivethousands of letters a year. I am continually amazed that by corresponding with people I know only through letters I have come into contact with thousands of kindred spirits, soul mates whose deepest values I share. Every letter is written by a person to whom I feel very close, and I read each of them with reverence. What my readers tell me has had a profound effect on my thinking and, in turn, on what I write.

With each letter I read, I wonder why a perfect stranger, someone who knows me only through my books, would write to me with intimate details of both the great joy and the great pain and anguish he or she has gone through. More than that, I am fascinated by the fact that there is rarely an ounce of self-pity in any of the letters I get. Since I turned fifty I have been spending more and more time reading and rereading the stories my readers tell me, opening myself up to them, seeing how they supplement and confirm my own life experiences, and gradually the answer has become clearer to me. I admire the courage and bravery that my readers have displayed in their own lives; they, in turn, find an echo, an affirmation, in the philosophy I have expressed, sometimes without really knowing it, in my books.

We all face struggles and conflicts, and we all want to deal with them courageously, with what Hemingway called grace under pressure. This is what is expressed over and over again in all these wonderful letters. Together, my books and the letters I receive are determined to affirm and confirm the necessity of living our lives with as much vitality and intensity as is humanly possible.

I often think of the choices my readers have had to make, and I thank God that I havent been placed in many of those situations myself, although I certainly have had to face my share of tough and difficult decisions. But just a sampling of what my readers have had to deal with in their lives is enough to show how painful the dilemmas we all might end up facing can be:

Your teenage son is a drug addict and you must face the prospect of kicking him out of the house.

Your husband is killing himself with alcohol and you must somehow intervene.

Your mother is in the last stages of terminal cancer, and she has asked you to help her stop the pain.

Your unmarried teenage daughter is pregnant.

Your stepfather keeps making passes at you.

You have started a business with a friend and discover that the friend is taking money from the till.

Your newborn son needs a life-support system to keep him alive.

Your parents have said they wont go to your wedding if you marry the man you love, who is of a different faith.

You find out that your sister-in-law is having an affair, and you dont know if you should tell your brother.