saying yes

lightreads writes:

I was there because I want to live a big life, I want to do the hard thing, I want to be the one who said yes.

Which, now that I have seen someone say it, is the best way to describe the painful and struggling answer I am always making to this poem by Constantine Cavafy:

For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It’s clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,

he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he’d still say no. Yet that no—the right no—
drags him down all his life.

I do not think I have ever had the great Yes ready within me. I suspect that I have always been one of life's great natural Noes. But one who has said Yes anyway, because fuck, who is my own character to tell me what my life is going to be like? I'm not the boss of me! I don't care if it is the right No. I too have stepped up to things because I want to be the one who said Yes.