The Circumstances We Did Not Choose

Something can be easy for me to understand and still be difficult for you. Before I decide that this says something about your character, I want to ask what makes the answer so clear from where I am standing.

Perhaps I have time you do not have. Perhaps I have somewhere to go, somebody to call, or enough security to risk being wrong. Perhaps I already know something you are only beginning to understand.

Those things can disappear from my account of a decision. I remember choosing. I forget how much helped make the choice possible.

Then I look at someone else’s life and ask why they did not do the same.

I have written before about trying to understand other people. There is a question I want to stay with here: what happens when we judge a decision without taking seriously the circumstances in which it had to be made?

And what happens when the person we judge that way is ourselves?

What I can see from outside

A decision is the part of a situation that becomes visible. Someone stays. Someone leaves. Someone accepts something I would have refused. Someone refuses something that looks, to me, like an opportunity.

I can see the answer without seeing the choices that were actually available.

Imagine telling someone to leave a job they depend on when they have no savings and someone else depends on their income. Leaving may still be possible eventually. It may even be necessary. But the advice has skipped over what happens between deciding to leave and being able to live afterwards.

The same instruction means something different when there is money in the bank, a place to stay and someone willing to help.

I do not have to experience another person’s life exactly as they have experienced it to recognise that difference. I do need to leave room for information I do not have. What seems like hesitation may involve a cost I have not counted. What looks like an easy alternative may be unavailable to them.

Even asking about it takes care. “Why didn’t you just leave?” already suggests that the answer should have been simple. “What made leaving difficult?” gives the person somewhere to begin.

They may not want to tell me. They may not yet have words for it. Respecting someone does not require them to hand over every private detail before I stop reducing them to a choice.

The child inside those circumstances

When I was little, there were times when I lived on the streets without a mother or father looking after me. I did not choose those circumstances. I was a child trying to live inside them.

If you learn that about me now, I hope it helps you understand something about my life. I would not want it to make you see me as less capable, less trustworthy or worth less as a person.

The decisions I made then belonged to that child’s situation. They need to be understood with his age, his knowledge and the care available to him in view. An adult looking back has possibilities and understanding that a child may never have had.

In my essay about finding a slice of bread, I described a small moment from childhood. Looking back, I can recognise the hunger and the fear around that moment. I can also recognise the boy’s curiosity and the pleasure he took in discovering something. Knowing more about his circumstances allows me to see more of him.

That matters to me when I think about the streets too. A difficult beginning should not become a permanent judgement about the person who lived through it.

Today, I can make considered decisions and carry responsibility. The fact that I needed care then does not make me incapable now. Nor should I have to prove that I turned out well before someone agrees that the child deserved care in the first place.

He deserved it while he was still there, with no finished story about what his life would become.

Understanding leaves room for responsibility

When I say that I do not want to judge a person by a decision made under pressure, I mean that I do not want to turn that decision into a complete verdict on their character or worth.

We still need to be able to say that a choice caused harm. We need to be able to question a decision, protect ourselves from its consequences and ask for something to change.

The circumstances matter in that conversation because they help us understand what responsibility could reasonably have looked like. What did the person know? How much freedom did they have? What alternatives were within reach? A child dependent on adults and an adult with power over others are not choosing from the same position.

Sometimes new information changes our judgement of the action itself. Sometimes it explains why something happened while leaving a real need for repair. Either way, I want the understanding to become more accurate.

If my decision affects someone else, my circumstances deserve to be heard alongside their experience of the consequences. I cannot make their hurt disappear by explaining my intention. I can listen, acknowledge my part and consider what I am able to do now.

We can take harm seriously without deciding that we know everything a person is. We can also recognise someone’s humanity while keeping a boundary they do not like. Compassion needs room for everyone affected by the situation.

When I turn the judgement on myself

The judgement does not always come from someone else. It can arrive in the way I tell my own history.

I look back at a decision with knowledge I gained afterwards. I know how something ended. I can see a warning I did not understand at the time. I have words now for something I could barely explain then.

It is easy to take all of that back into the memory and ask why my earlier self did not use it.

Learning from a decision requires a fairer account. What did I actually know then? What could I reasonably have found out? What support could I reach? What was I afraid would happen, and was that fear connected to something real?

Those questions may reveal something I would now handle differently. They may also reveal how little room I had. I want to be able to recognise both without turning every regret into proof that I am a bad person.

“I wish I had done something else” can lead to a useful conversation. I can name a mistake, make an apology or prepare differently for a similar situation. “There is something wrong with me” leaves the whole person on trial, with no clear account of what would help.

Sometimes the fairest sentence is simply: I was dealing with more than I knew how to manage, and I needed help that was not there.

I do not think saying that makes a person weak. It allows the circumstances to be part of the truth.

Allowing someone to see more in you

There is another reason this matters to me. The harsh view we carry of ourselves can enter the space where someone is trying to care for us.

Suppose I look at you and find you beautiful. I want to know you more closely. I can imagine sharing my life with you, including the ordinary days and the difficult ones. Yet when you look at yourself, you keep returning to decisions you made when life gave you very little room.

You may wonder whether I would still feel the same if I understood more. I would want there to be enough safety between us for an honest conversation, at a pace you can choose.

I would also want you to leave open the possibility that knowing more could help me understand you. Care does not always depend on knowing less.

I cannot promise on behalf of every person that every disclosure will be received well. Nor can affection give me complete knowledge of you. What I can offer is a willingness to listen, to ask rather than assume, and to let your own account matter.

I would not want you to dismiss that willingness because you have already decided that your past makes you unworthy of it.

At the same time, my feelings cannot become another instruction you have to obey. You do not owe me a relationship because I see something good in you. You do not have to borrow my opinion of you or agree with everything I believe. Being loved should leave you room to know your own mind.

What I hope for is smaller and more patient: that you might allow another person’s care to count as something real, without immediately explaining why they must be mistaken.

Perhaps they see a part of you that has received very little attention from you lately. You can be curious about that without making a promise.

You do not have to answer immediately

I want to be careful with the idea that we always have to decide now.

Some circumstances do require an immediate response. Other decisions affect people who reasonably need an answer. Waiting can have consequences too. I would not tell someone that every choice can be postponed indefinitely.

But urgency can also enter a situation where there is room for time. Someone expresses love, offers help or asks an important question, and suddenly we feel we must settle the meaning of our entire life before the conversation ends.

Often, we can give a smaller, honest answer. I need time to think. I would like to understand more. I am not ready to decide, but I can come back to this with you.

Where another person is waiting, it helps to be clear about what that means. A pause can include an agreed time to speak again. It can leave them free to decide whether they can wait. Taking time for ourselves can still include care for the other person.

I believe it becomes easier to consider a difficult decision when we stop demanding that it prove our worth. Then we can give our attention to the situation: what is needed, what is possible, who will be affected and what help we can ask for.

That will not make every choice easy. It may give us a little more room to make it honestly.

Leave room for the person

I would want someone to look at my life with enough curiosity to notice the circumstances I did not choose. I want to offer that attention to other people too.

Before I say what I would have done, I can ask what was possible. Before I turn one decision into a description of someone’s character, I can remember how much of the situation I may not know.

And when I look back at myself, I can let the child remain a child. I can recognise what he needed without making his need a reason to look down on him.

The same kindness has a place in the present. There are people who may want to know us more fully, who can listen to a difficult history without making it the only thing they see. We can take time to find out whether their care is steady. We can keep our limits while allowing ourselves to be met.

If that possibility feels unfamiliar, there is no need to force a conclusion today.

Perhaps the first step is to leave a little room for it: someone could know what life has put you through, understand more about the decisions you made there, and still want to sit beside you.