Fork in the Road

In 22 days, I will begin to count down my last year in China.

It still surprises me that it has been two years since I first landed in this city. It was September 27, 2006 when I took that flight to Beijing. Bagyong Milenyo was rampaging Manila at that time and we were the last flight to take off for the day - all others were cancelled. Talk about my sheer luck.

I have spent the better part of my first year here wishing I could fast forward to 2009 and also going home every couple of months on average. Now for some reason, I wish I could pause time... I just need it to stop ticking, stop the countdown for a while as I decipher my next move.

It's not so much the leaving that bothers me; it's more of the fact that I am again facing make-or-break decisions. Another fork in the road. And as the years go by, the decisions only get harder and harder, and the number of choices seem to multiply exponentially over time.

I have been lucky in life for the most part - and I thank God and all my lucky stars for that - but for this same reason I have developed a sort of 'pre-risk' aversion. I call it that because I spend a lot of time worrying about what decisions to take, but I am not scared to take the plunge once the decision has been made. Imagine being scared about deciding whether or not to enter a dark cave... but once you step inside you feel a sense of calm and acceptance about your decision, and resolve to just hope against hope that the choice you made turns out to be the right one. You also resolve not to go running out of that cave anytime soon. That's how this pre-risk aversion works for me.

The rational, logical, business suit-clad part of me says there's always a way to calculate risk, and the best decisions are the informed ones. On the other hand, the life-loving, passionate, impulsive part of me that rocks to Eheads songs tells me that when I stand there before the fork in my road, my heart will know what's best for me. In many previous life decisions I have made -- like which course to take in college and what school to go to and which company to work for and whether or not I should stay in the MISE program and whether to choose location vs. position for expatriation -- there seems to have been some sort of compromise between logic and passion.

Should I stay? Should I go? Where should I go? What do I want?

I can feel my palms starting to sweat just thinking about it.

I will just have to find a way to work out that same balance between logic and passion this time. Pray to God my brain doesn't explode from too much thinking!