I meant that title: decisions can be reversed; what lasts are the possibilities to choose from.  Or more precisely, what lasts is the fact that there always are more possibilities, as long as we are not risk averse.

The reason this is on my mind has to do with my stumbling over a decades-old, short correspondence with Masha Gessen. Many of you know Gessen as a Russian/American journalist, queer activist and writer who documented the evolving political landscape under Putin’s regime and is highly critical of the Trump presidency.

After having left Russia in 2013 for the second time, likely endangered by being a critical voice in particular for LGTB issues, Gessen now teaches as a visiting professor at Amherst College and contributes regularly in the New Yorker, the NYT, and many other publications and is a recipient of a Guggenheim, an Andrew Carnegie and a Nieman Fellowship.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/a-mafia-state-within-a-totalitarian-society/546848/

As a Russian (the parents emigrated with a young Masha) and a Jew, Gessen tackled issues of (not)belonging since a young age. As someone who had inherited genes predisposing of serious cancer, a decision to take preventative measures to fight the disease was on order some 14 years ago, given that many relatives had died of the scourge. Here we were two complete strangers and yet writing about the pro’s and con’s of preventative ovary removal, something I championed, something Gessen, who also already had children) declined, until just recently when it became unavoidable.

I have, I believe, managed to avoid pronouns up until this point because Masha Gessen, who used to be a woman, is now in transition to becoming a man. And rarely have I read a more eloquent and thoughtful description of the tackling of choices  – from emigration to medical decisions to sex change – than in a recent article by him in the New York Review of Books.

The way he seeks out the world as an expanding universe that might hold a promise of belonging when one is open for change stands in stark contrast to what I believe underlies the populist, nativist movements of our time. I have written about it here last October, when discussing Heinrich Mann’s Der Untertan in the context of the German elections. (Germany, by the way, STILL has no government since the parties seem to be unable to form workable coalitions.)

If you look at it closely, populist movements are against anything that represents pluralism – the coexistence of multiple options. Diversity is not only not desired, it is actively feared. To have too many options is seen as overwhelming; there is a longing for simplicity, redux, a singular structure that is preferred to the complexities of gender, nationality, culture and political movements.

Unfortunately such preference is not only voiced by those who lost status due to an increase in societal diversity and might regain it, but also by many who will be hurt if such a revisionist dream becomes once again reality. Clarity and structural regimentation are seen as antidotes to the chaos of an evolving world where national, cultural and gender boundaries are but in flux.

I hope the fact that so many fought for so long and so hard to implement changes means they won’t easily yield to the other half that wants to return to the old ways, (good old ways only in their imagination, if you ask me.) To have people like Gessen model the courage to radically reinvent ourselves gives me hope.

Photographs are of some of the many paths one could choose.