I heard that January 17th is a significant date for those that proclaim New Year’s Resolutions. Apparently, if you’ve gone off-track on said resolution by that date, whatever you were hoping to resolute ain’t happening. If true, that’s an interesting claim – that it takes just 2.5 weeks after proclaiming a personal goal to have life take you off-course. (No, I did not goog this info, but if you happen to, please let me know what you find out.)

Though I am not a New Year’s Resolution proclaimer, I do do a Winter Solstice ritual that includes a combo of fire / water / moon and a Release / Bring ceremony, releasing things which no longer serve me and bringing in what will serve me well. So, kind of a similar practice, though what’s significant to me is that there is intention and accountability in the act of performing this ceremony.

I absolutely believe that a possible fundamental difference in that ceremony and a New Year’s Resolution is that I read each of my Releases and each of my Brings out loud. When you actively verbalize something, it sticks, even if the universe is the only one listening. Reading out loud serves up realness to my words, the kind of realness that you yourself can’t even hide from.

Now here is where I hook all of this into the math definition of the word choose (thank you for your patience during that preamble), and how it co-exists – how it gives a sort of double-meaning to the word choose – with the common definition to “decide on a course of action.”

In combinatorics, this is a binomial coefficient:

Here are my two takeaways for you of this usage of the word choose.

1. Another (longer) way to read that binomial coefficient would be: A number of possibilities chooses a number of unordered outcomes. Umm, hello, ain’t that the truth? And you can choose to interpret that as something that might feel overwhelming to you, or you can look at it as a wonderful opportunity where you get to choose to explore so many possibilities and outcomes.

2. When the word choose is read out loud, there’s a feeling of ownership – of control, of commitment – to whatever it is you are choosing.