The Last Thing We Choose
Most mornings, when I’m home, I walk the same stretch along the top of a levee. It’s not much to look at—cracked blacktop, a slow-moving river, open space on either side. But it’s familiar. It doesn’t change. And lately, that’s what I’ve come to appreciate.
When the world feels uncertain, it helps to be in a place where you don’t have to think about what’s next. Your feet know the way, and your mind is free to notice what you’d usually miss.
Like a woman. And her hat.
I see her often on the path, though I don’t know where she comes from or where she’s headed. She pushes a shopping cart and pulls a suitcase, both packed with what looks like everything she owns. She wears too many layers for the weather, probably because she has nowhere else to keep them. Her face is hidden behind a surgical mask and a wide-brimmed bucket hat pulled low. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t look up. For a long time, I only felt pity when I passed her. She was always there, but always just out of reach, like someone the world had quietly let go.
One morning I noticed something different. Her hat. It wasn’t like the one I remembered. The shape was the same, but the fabric wasn’t. This one was pale blue. The next time I saw her, it was yellow corduroy. Then one with pineapples. Later, sequins.
I didn’t think much of it at first. But over time, I realized it kept happening. The cart stayed the same. So did the suitcase and her clothes. But the hat changed. Every time.
In a life reduced to necessity, almost everything she carries is there because it has to be. But the hats—those are different. She has many, and she chooses a different one each day. Not for warmth. Not for fashion. But because it’s still her decision to make. And that makes them more than clothing. They’re a quiet declaration—of identity, of intention, of what she refuses to give up, even now.
Not meant for anyone else, only for her. To say: These are mine. This is me.
Not to hide her. Not to shield her. But to help her remember who she is inside.
And when I see her now, I don’t think of her as separate from nature, but as part of it— adapted to an environment that offers her little. The cart is her den. The suitcase, her shell. The layers of clothing, her insulation. The mask, her camouflage. But the hat, that’s her plumage. Her expression. Her self. The one visible thread of the person she hasn't surrendered.
I’ve come to believe that what we choose when we have almost nothing left says more about us than what we choose when we have everything.
Most of what happens to us—natural disasters, economic shifts, illness, betrayal, politics, loss—is beyond our control. But inside all of that are small, defiant decisions we still get to make. And those decisions, especially under pressure, reveal not only who we are, but what we care about.
That’s true for people. It’s also true for institutions.
Lately, we’ve watched organizations, businesses, and leaders retreat from who they once were. Some stay silent when they should speak. Some bend their values to match the mood of the room. Others walk back what they claimed to stand for. They tell themselves it’s survival. They call it strategy. But most days, it looks more like surrender. Or maybe just revelation —what they always believed, now out in the open.
But real survival doesn’t usually look polished. It looks improvised. A tree growing sideways, not because it wants to, but because that’s where the soil is. A fox sleeping in a roadside drain. A bird weaving a nest from plastic and string. You don’t look at those things and feel pity. You look at them and feel awe. Because they’ve made a life out of what was available and refused to disappear.
She is no different.
She isn’t making a statement. She’s making it through. And in the middle of that, she’s still choosing something that reflects her. That’s what stayed with me. Not her silence. Not her burden. But that daily act of expression in a life the world has tried to erase.
Tomorrow, I’ll walk the same path again. I’ll pass the same trees, the same cracks in the pavement. And if she’s there, I’ll notice the hat she’s wearing, whatever felt most like her that morning. It may be the only thing that still does.
And I’ll place my faith in another of nature’s imperfect but tenacious survivors. The kind who doesn’t just endure, but refuses to forget what’s worth enduring for. The kind who holds onto what matters most—consistently, stubbornly, and without needing anyone to notice.
Even now.
Even still.