“Do you regret not having kids?” my brother-in-law asked me on my 65th birthday. Earlier that evening, we had enjoyed a festive birthday dinner at a taverna in Mytiline, on the Greek island of Lesvos.
“No,” I answered. “I actually feel good about most of the decisions I have made in my life.”
I don’t know if that was the answer he expected, certainly coming from someone (me) who was about to mark the 18th anniversary of his HIV diagnosis.
In fact, when I have said what I did to others, I’ve always wondered if they think I am deluded. After all, it was also the choices I made that led to my encounter with the same deadly virus that killed too many of my friends.
So why feel good about my choices?
Because I have accepted responsibility for their consequences, both positive and negative. And because I have come to understand and accept that I am as flawed and human as anyone else, and to practice the concept of self-forgiveness. These are fruits of the wisdom I have sought to cultivate in myself.
It’s funny about taking responsibility for ourselves: We are happy to enjoy the good things that come our way as the result of a good choice we make.
But what about when a choice brings negative consequences? It’s certainly a negative consequence of my choice to engage in the sexual behavior that got me infected with HIV. I must now take expensive, toxic medication every day for the rest of my life.
Here’s the thing: We don’t get to accept responsibility for our choices when they lead to positive outcomes and then cast blame elsewhere when our choice leads to a negative result.
Within months of my diagnosis in 2005, I offered myself as a sort of mental health guinea pig when I volunteered to be interviewed by a psychiatrist I knew in front of a hotel ballroom full of other psychiatrists. We were going to demonstrate for the doctors who wanted to learn what a psychiatric intake assessment would look like for a newly diagnosed HIV-positive individual.
In our conversation, the subject of choices and responsibility came up. Although I was still very new to the business of publicly sharing my personal story, I could already articulate a viewpoint that continues to this day.
I was asked whether I blame the other person who passed along his virus to me. I responded that I had read enough of the French existentialists to understand that truly taking responsibility for ourselves means that we must accept the consequences of all our choices—not only those that lead to pleasant results.
I would not—could not—blame the other man because whatever we did together that got me infected was consensual, not coerced. I had chosen to engage in the behavior that had led to the fateful phone call from my doctor breaking the news of my diagnosis.
That’s where many of us go off track. We consider ourselves to be mature, responsible adults. Yet it is tempting to blame someone else or chalk it up to life’s “unfairness” when we confront a difficult situation.
It’s hard to confront the fact that our own choices, more often than we care to admit, lead us down the pathway either toward peace and concord or toward self-defeat.
Becoming resilient requires us to own our part in the circumstances of our lives.
We must accept that even our challenges come about because of our choices. Ditto for the joyful times.
It takes practice to choose actions and words that contribute toward supporting our best good, just as it takes practice to know how to accept responsibility for undesirable results and when to move on. This is why we discuss “practicing” mindfulness and other activities supporting our resilience.
It comes down to making choices that support the bigger choice: to care for ourselves.
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