the apples weren't going to wait — on choosing, and the pain that follows

a few weeks ago i had a choice to make. a big one.

the harvest is ready, the apples are falling, and it's time to start another cider making season. it's a passion project that allows me to be in nature a lot. my tent is in the orchard, and for a period of over six weeks i will be on and off to the east of the country to meet my inner farmer. i am learning about and connecting with the land. it's my way of living in nature part time for this moment in the year, and exploring whether outside living is something i would like to do full time.

the apples don't discuss timing. they have their own rhythm. it is 100% different from the pace in the city, and it challenges our calendars. where we are used to planning ahead whatever we need to do, squeezing in the afternoons, splitting up events to make them fit — this just doesn't work like that. when the apples are ready, they fall, and you have to act. simple as that. we need a weekend to shake the apples from the trees and pick them from the ground. the next day we press the apple juice — 300 liters — and it goes in a big kettle in which we add the yeast. it can only be done in one go. so when the apples are ready, we clear our calendars and go for it.

one of these weekends fell together with the wedding of dear friends of my partner. an italian wedding, held in their own renovated german countryside villa. the most romantic wedding you can probably imagine. an opportunity to connect with a side of my partner from a time where we didn't know each other. a place that can sometimes cause pain, because of the life we didn't live together. this wedding could have been a moment to have a little peek into that other reality.

but the apples were ready. and they weren't going to wait.

i waited though. until the very last moment to decide — but i did, with fire. i wanted to make this cider. this was my passion project, something i want to choose for. something that is mine, and my choice.

and then came the pain that follows choosing. the sorrow. the experience of the consequence of this choice.

and here is what i think the pain was actually showing me. it was not a punishment. it was proof. you only mourn a road you really wanted to walk. if that weekend had meant nothing to me, staying in the orchard would have cost me nothing. the sorrow i sat with was proof of how much is alive in me — my little heart, longing for a place to belong, to be part of life, to step into life. it hurts to let go, because it matters. and maybe that is not something to fix, but something to cherish.

because it hit me: i have been avoiding having to choose in life, because deep down i know that it hurts. it hurts to let go. every act of choosing comes with the knowledge of a choice that isn't made. a reality that isn't experienced. a life that isn't lived.

and that is exactly what i had been avoiding all this time — because deep down i knew the price. letting the apples, the wedding, the calendar decide would have been easier. it would have been life living me, instead of me living my life. and that difference turned out to be everything.

because there is no such thing as the right choice. there is choice, and what follows. and as long as i am the one choosing, i am the one having agency, i am the one living my life. not life living me.

i sat with this grief for the whole weekend, and finally allowed myself to experience the pain that comes from choosing.

and the strangest thing happened: the pain turned out to be a gift. i had expected it to be destructive. that's why i avoided it for so long. but when i finally allowed myself to feel it, it didn't close me down — it opened. with this pain came the tenderness and poetry of longing for something that was never there, from a place of cherish. a tenderness towards what my little heart is just longing for, and that is not more than a place to belong. to be part of life, to step into life.

and there i was, feeling my heart like never before. just from being able to agree to sense the pain.

right after making my decision to stay in the orchard, i picked this apple from the ground. there it was. my heart in my hands. torn by an arrow, shining red, and full of life and abundance.