Some people just don’t have a hard time making choices.

I have a friend who goes into a store looks through the shelves or the racks and knows exactly what she wants to buy.

I on the other hand can defend one side as equally as the other: How could it be the perfect fixture and a minute later could be the totally wrong fixture?

The other day a friend calls and says “I just came home from the doctor who said ‘the reason why so many frum ladies get run down is because they’re covered from head to toe and no vitamin D from the sun is able to get into their bones.

I hear between her words: this statement jabs at my friend’s choice core.

“Maybe it’s true — maybe we’re not getting enough sun?” she questions.

“If HaKadosh Baruch Hu thought we needed more sun then there wouldn’t be laws for tzniyus” I say adding that in the last generation liver was thought to be the greatest thing the cure-all. Mothers spent half their days figuring out ways to disguise its taste. Today liver is considered one of the worst possible foods as all the waste collects there … Poison.

Who to believe?

I believe the Rambam when he says that fruits eaten at the wrong times are like swords to the digestive system.

I believe Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto when he says to “Flee from envy lust and the pursuit of honor and from whatever stems from them for they are all deviant offshoots of an alien vine.”

I believe Rav Shimshon Pincus when he says we are obligated to find the positive in our spouses and Rav Moshe Aharon Stern when he says the choices of our grandparents have profound effects on their grandchildren.

There’s no convincing or unconvincing. Their words resonate with truth. It’s not even a choice.

So what exactly happens differently when you wake up the next morning and are confronted with a new set of confusing sometimes even life-altering choices? Is this our  opportunity to check where we’re holding? Just like G-d asks Adam in Gan Eden: “Where are you?”

When I daven I know where I am.

When my hands are in the dough making challah on Erev Shabbos I know where I am.

What’s really amazing about the life of a Jew is that at almost every turn from choosing an ice cream from the freezer case a cheder for a child or a shidduch we’re asked to make choices — which actually means that we’re asked to define and many times redefine our very selves.

When my children go shopping and the sales pitch prevents them from hearing their inner voice I always say go out of the store for ten minutes and if the item still calls then go back.

I remember a woman once said to me “I’m just sending my son to kindergarten and I already have to define who he is. Which yarmulke. Which pants. The proper shoes … And he’s only five years old.

They say each shidduch brings you closer. Each shidduch brings you closer to yourself. Who am I really?

One bochur I know who started shidduchim had absolutely no idea what he wanted or who he really was. He’d say “Just tell me where to show up.” After four dates with the same girl he woke up one morning and said “She’s not the one; I want personality.” Later he found a girl with personality and she asked him what he wanted to do with his life. He said “I want to learn full-time.” The words just came out. He really didn’t know this for sure before that date. And since their marriage a few years ago he’s been learning straight.

The mother of that boy told me what she learned from her son: “When we’re faced with choices we have to ask ourselves is this something we really want? Listen between the lines. HaKadosh Baruch Hu opens people’s hearts and eyes so that we can see who and what a person really is and that all the other things don’t matter. Because when you get in touch with the real thing the other stuff falls away.”

It’s really not hard to make good choices.