Dear Oprah,

Often, we are given choices.

Palm opened.

Pretty.

Enviable.

Deceiving.

Choices.

Often, we are revealed options.

Go here and find this. Take this and find that. This path. That path. This will lead you to the happiness you have worked so hard for. This is happy. This is the way.

If this happens to you, this will happen and be provided for you. Sounds great. Till it's taken away and it's not an option. It was just a choice. It wasn't yours to begin with. It was just shown to you. See what can happen if?

They are never ours. They are only shown. As options. To show you that happiness is your choice with or without these outside 'options' being shown to you like Prada bags on the streets of NYC. Really, they are just knock offs. The real thing, is not...there.

Try it on. Take it off. Try something else...

And if we reach for said options, there is an attachment that is created.

The Bhagavad-Gita reveals that even in these choices, we must make a choice.

Action, when driven by passion and truth is fueled by purity.

When there is an attachment to that action, it becomes colored with a myriad of other things...

Heat, fury, anger, negativity, selfishness and let me think of a few more...

Hold on, I have to reach into my pocket, to my blackberry, to my Mac, my Internet, to my face book, cable, my health insurance and Netflix. Hold on while I get my receipt from Whole Foods and eBay, to my Craig’s list, my texts, my phone book, my bills and things owed, my list of obligations, fulfillments. Hold on as I reach for my dreams, my inspiration.

Hold on as I grasp for my heart, my kidneys, oh and all the memories I have of my life.

Hold on. Just hold on one dang minute.

Hold on as I reach for the thing that I love the most. Because, as soon as I share it, it is open to scrutiny and judgment.

And really, even on the street, I'd ask for more.

Put it out there. Put yourself out there...and you are open.

There is revealed, more choices. And it's harder to decipher between the options.

What's it worth?

What's it all REALLY worth?

Your life, what you love and live for, work for, are passionate about?

What is what you want really worth?

What are you willing to give up?

What are you willing to sacrifice to surrender to your truth?

Hold on.

Wait just one second.

I like my stuff and I like being given options. It's when I'm shown the stuff that I can't have that I get frustrated. So, take it all away then.

It's all away now.

Now, what do I do?

I sit in front of my refrigerator at 3 AM in fear for my life that the eggs will be gone, the milk will be gone, the pickles, because really, what will they go with. And, the ketchup...

Pickles and ketchup? When there's no other choice...

I fear that it will all be gone in an instant.

My apartment, my clothes, my music.

And what will I do when they are gone?

Remember the pickles...

I will remember the way the pickles tasted.

On their own and with a great fat veggie burger.

I will remember the way the vinegar felt as it ran down my chin.

I will remember the pickles.

I will remember the way it felt to download the latest song from Bombay Dub Orchestra or the newest Broadway soundtrack I have yet to see in person.

I'll sing it over and over till I get the lyrics. Just right. There you go.

On the 405 or Coldwater, there is nothing like listening to your music, you know so well.

Until you are stuck on Sunset for an hour and the loop has gone on and on till you are bored. Reach for another choice, a phone call, a, gasp, text...no not me, the girl next to me who cut me off mid belt singing the Xanadu soundtrack. We are all distracted with choices.

I will remember the eggs on the morning I can sleep later than 6AM and the milk I can have with my coffee that even on my best day can be made improperly. Seriously, I've lived with myself for so long and still can't get it right, but when I do, it's gold...with milk. Make it stronger. Make it sweeter. Chose.

I sit naked or I sit in my favorite couture...that I have yet to wear with a dashing gentleman or with the girls.

I have no cable, no books - they've all been sold or given up. To the economy. THE most used word in the English vocabulary in our modern times.

I sit in the quiet or with the pickles and the hum of the fridge or the Cinematic Orchestra as a soundtrack for my demise into solitude and surrender to the 'options' and 'choices' that have been offered.

Here's a chance. Perhaps this? What about that? I think you should....

If we all just, practiced yoga. And I don't just mean on the mat for an hour and a half.

But, if we just turn it all off, the Internet, the things blinking and bleeping for our attention,

Can we make the choice, to just be? To trust that it will all be okay?

Quiet. Fill up in the stillness of the moment. With nothing. Take all the crap that's filling up our minds and muscles and let them work themselves out by breathing deeply and pushing them out gently with a sigh or flutter or the lips, a stretch to the left or the right. It doesn't cost a thing.

In that moment of peace, can we find what it is that we absolutely need to move forward, without hesitation, without technical assistance or obligation?

Can we just listen to the gentle hum of the room around us, which vibrates the gentle OM beneath us and connects us all? Supports us all. Our decisions and choices?

Can we just do that?

Can we...can I, just chose to allow what is, be?

I can trust in the power of the universe to protect.

Protect me and the choices I make.

I make these choices.

And then there are choices that are revealed to me.

Take this. Try that.

And then it all goes away.

Recently, I've taken to writing in the sand.

Have you ever watched the ocean?

It's so unpredictable. It just wants to get the f in and get out. It'll rise forward, and then hesitate. It doesn't know what it wants, but it always comes in and always goes out. That much we know. We trust THAT. The rest is just frustrating if you are trying to write a message in the sand. You can't choreograph it.

It'll never listen. It'll only give you options. Then take them away, everyday.

But it's still cool to watch. It's cool to try. It's cool to know you have done your best in the moment no matter what's been given. To know you have put yourself out there to be given choices whether you have control over them or not.

Truth is, there is no controlling. Try telling that to a middle child, NYer, Virgo.

Ask me how I would deal with these 'choices' 6 months ago and I would have stuttered in panic.

Perhaps I'm getting on in years, but really, the strength is not in the what, but in the letting go of all that's attached to the what.

Deep, right? I know. It's because it's all been given to me and taken away that I can sit here and write, write now and know that I have all I need right here. Like Steve Martin in 'The Jerk'..."that's all I need, is this thermos!"

"And this lamp. That's all I need, is this thermos and this lamp."

"And..."

Keep adding on and there is more to maintain. Take it all away and what do you have?

It'll all still be there. The bills, the questions, the choices, the what if's, the worry, the triumph and the failure. It will always be there.

But, how we are when we're full and when we are empty, that's the bliss. Stay steady. Sthira, in Sanskrit. Stay steady in the flow of fullness and emptyness, happiness and saddness. The win and the will is to keep the balance when life throws us choices we make and choices that are taken away.

I can sit in front of the fridge wearing nothing or donned in heels and DVF.

It doesn't change the fact that the pickles will be there and then they will be gone.

How near. How far.

It all seems so close. The choices we make for our future will effect our now.

Our now.

Our now.

Our now is all we really own.

The choices, we can't choreograph when they come in and when they go out. But they will come. And they will go. Sthira.

And there will always be, the tumult beneath us as we try on the options.

And the pickles.

They are gone now. I've eaten them all as I write this. It's all that is left now.

Until tomorrow.

Where they can be found again. As an option in the aisle of Pavilions. Or passed by for something else.

Perhaps capers. Capers. That sounds like a good choice.

Yours and steady in the tumult of choice,

Lady