The week the lessons were inconvenient

A woman in Dokki signed up for evening German lessons in the autumn. She chose the course, chose the slot, paid for the term and knew the dates before she started.

By January the reasons have arrived. Work ran late. Her nephew had a birthday. The bridge was solid with traffic. Each one is true. Each one she brings to the teacher, gently, as though it were something the teacher should do something about.

But none of it is the teacher's problem. The teacher did not choose the class for her. She did.

That is the uncomfortable part of choosing anything. When we are made to do something, the excuses belong to whoever made us. When we sign up, they come home with us. We knew the timetable. It was not hidden. It was the arrangement we said yes to.

This is why so many people prefer never quite to choose. If the course was the company's idea, or the family's, or something everyone was doing, then the missed weeks are someone else's fault. Choosing removes that cover. It turns the thing into ours.

None of this means life stops interrupting. It never stops. There is always a birthday, a late meeting, a jammed bridge, and there is never a perfect month to learn a language.

The work is to say so plainly, to ourselves first, and then to go to the lesson anyway, or to the next one.

Owning the choice is uncomfortable. Drifting through something we never really signed up for costs a great deal more.