The Third Option: What Tosca Taught Me About Choice

A friend gave me a ticket to go to the opera yesterday: Tosca, by Puccini, with three gods of the opera firmament on stage. I was exhausted from two days managing a city-wide public transport strike and almost didn't go. I'm so glad I did!

Not only was it an extraordinary performance - one of those I will tell my grandchildren about - but I discovered an unusual heroine in Tosca. Where most operatic heroines embrace and perpetuate women's conditioned victim archetype, Tosca shatters it completely. Faced with giving herself to a powerful abuser in exchange for her beloved's life or preserving her virtue and sending him to the gallows, she chooses a third option. She negotiates both their freedom, then brutally murders her tormentor.

Ultimately, the story then goes badly wrong, but what I admired was her clarity in a moment of intensity. Her refusal to accept the allocated role of victim.

The Stories We Inherit

This is something I have been working on for myself - like most women, I have stories of oppression and control, and I have at times given into the victim narrative. Which is not to say that bad things that happened were down to me - but in those moments I often failed to understand that I had an opportunity to be the author of my story. A subtle shift of understanding would have made me powerful instead of powerless.

Most of us go through life mostly accepting to be buffeted by circumstances, people, contexts. But real freedom is truly understanding that life is the ultimate creative act. Freedom is claimed in the everyday little decisions that we make, AND in those life-defining moments.

What I've learned from my own journey - and from watching Tosca refuse her impossible choice - is that there are three shifts that can move you from feeling trapped to feeling free.

First: What Simply IS

The first shift happens when you fully accept and surrender to what's already true. Tosca does lament her situation at first - wringing her hands, calling on God to rescue her, railing against the unfairness of it all. But when no divine intervention comes and she finally surrenders to exactly where she is? Everything shifts. Her vision clears. Her power returns.

I remember a particularly difficult period when a relationship was ending, and I spent weeks in that same pattern - lamenting, wishing things were different, waiting for some external rescue. It wasn't until I could fully accept "Yes, this relationship is ending, and I approve of this experience as what's true right now" that I could think clearly and see my real options.

Second: The Wild List

The second shift is both linguistic and creative. Notice when you're using language that removes your agency - "I have to," "I need to," "I have no choice" - and deliberately shift to language that restores it: "I want to," "I can," "I choose to." Then write down every option you can imagine - including the ones that seem impossible, impractical, or completely unrealistic.

This isn't about finding the perfect solution immediately. It's about breaking the mental prison that says you only have two terrible choices. When Tosca saw that third option - the knife on the table - it's because she hadn't accepted that submission and sacrifice were her only paths.

I keep a notebook specifically for this. When I feel cornered, I write "What I could do:" at the top of a page and then list everything that comes to mind, from the sensible to the absurd. Quit my job and become a street musician. Move to another country. Have the difficult conversation I've been avoiding. Ask for help. Change nothing but my attitude. Take the leap I've been scared to take.

Something magical happens around option seven or eight - your brain stops insisting there are only two ways forward and starts seeing possibilities everywhere.

Third: The Perfect Choice Trap

The third shift might be the most liberating: releasing the idea that there's one right decision waiting to be discovered. This belief keeps us frozen, endlessly analysing instead of acting.

Most successful decisions aren't perfect decisions - they're good enough decisions that someone committed to fully. Tosca didn't have time to weigh every possible consequence of grabbing that knife. She chose action over analysis, and in that moment, she authored her own story.

I used to paralyse myself searching for the "right" choice, as if there were some cosmic answer key I could access if I just analysed long enough. Now I ask myself: "What's a decision I can live with and commit to completely?" Then I make it. I pour my energy into making it work rather than second-guessing myself.

Your Story, Your Pen

These three shifts - seeing what simply is, expanding your options beyond the obvious two, and making good decisions rather than perfect ones - have changed how I move through the world. They've helped me remember that while I can't control what happens to me, I always have some choice in what happens through me.

Most of us have been conditioned to see ourselves as characters in other people's stories rather than the authors of our own. But every day offers moments - small and large - where we can pick up the pen and write the next line ourselves.

Puccini's Tosca may have met a tragic end, but in her moment of ultimate constraint, she refused to let someone else decide her fate. She saw a third option when everyone else saw only two impossible choices.

What third option might you be missing in your own life?