You Don't Get To Choose

 By the time you are 21 you may have already begun having those conversations with yourself that begin with the famous words, "Looking back... " These words precede a story about what we wish we had done that might have made what we have to do far more palatable.

It generally begins with your high school years when you cannot or will not decide what you want to build your future around¸ leaving you with the choice of 'general' studies. It's easier and maybe you will decide later and make a change. But when you don't, leaving school means you enter the work force taking whatever job you can find and continuing that path for a lifetime. Your resume reads, "This is what I have been doing." There's no continuity or focus, just a succession of jobs that paid a little better. You don't really get to choose because you didn't choose when it mattered.

This begins a pattern we tend to follow in our lives barring some significant event that alters our course. We 'go along to get along,' and follow an ill-defined path as we choose friends and even a partner that happens along our path. You don't really make choices about how these people may alter your course or what you may be passing up to be included with them. You just 'go with the flow' as though life is something that just happens to you. When it becomes your habit you have again failed to make choices that would have benefited you and now, you don't get to choose.

The pattern continues when you have children who attend a school pursuing a direction you don't agree with. You may not know who is on your school board or who the President is, or that they all ran for their positions. They were likely on the same ballot as your Congressmen. If you didn't bother to learn their names and what they stood for, or to vote, you didn't choose then and can't now. It's too late; you don't get to choose.

Soon, you don't bother to vote in the national elections, imagining that your vote doesn't count. 'It's those electoral votes that matter... ' Guess who is casting those electoral votes; their names were on the last election you missed! Now, you don't get to choose.

Your decision not to make a choice is a reflection of the belief that you and your choices don't matter; that you can't make a difference. Looking back, you will notice that the times when you did not believe you could become what you really desired or that you were not capable or able of achieving something important to you are the times when the road turned in a direction you hadn't planned to take. Making good choices is the power you were born with to set the course of your life. Your failure to do so may mean you don't get to choose.