Last night we agreed, that is me and the 4teen year old, that summer is indeed going by very fast. They dread the school days in the coming September and I another birthday in October.
Choice is a wonderful thing to have. Where I grew up, we barely had any choice of anything. Ice cream came only in vanilla flavor, forget about forty one flavors. Shoes came in the color black for winter and white for summer. We had two basic channels on TV that started broadcasting after 4:30pm with no cable and we watched whatever was on. After school activities were homework, reading and more reading in absence of homework. Arts and sports were for lazy and the idle. And that is just a basic sample of my choice less childhood. It was never a boring life, it was simply alternative less. I bet you do get my drift.
I used to think that having too many choices caused disorientation and confusion (no brain washing involved). I religiously believed that this is the reason that I never needed a therapist or a shrink and almost never hated my mother. I assumed that lack of choice made my mental path clear and undisturbed by the monster of doubt.
Now at 4tplus, the monster of doubt is haunting me and I have changed my mind as it is my privilege. And that is how I look at it:
The process of choosing what to eat for lunch out of a four page menu, may seem too funny of an example, but look at it this way: you take your time, study and ponder about the food options and then you choose. When the choice is made and the food is ordered, you have to eat it. Of course in some places you can still exchange if you do not like what you opted, but the point is that you choose and you live with the consequence. From that experience you learn to assume responsibility for your action and deal with the decree.
I bet some of you are laughing at me right now, and that is because you had always choices in your life. But I am not done yet, bear with me. From childhood one is groomed to make choices indirectly all the time. And in the process, as one grows, they make mistakes, learn about the experience, share the dos and don’ts and learn how to choose to their liking. This is how they learn to take control over their lives, something that I have blissfully failed to do most of my life.
It is easy to blame someone else when my life did not turn the way I wanted it. I chose my career based on what school was available to me, not where I want to go or what I wanted to become, therefore, my career unhappiness is blamed on a country that failed to provide enough and adequate opportunities for its population. But when I choose the career and at the end, this is not what I want to be, then I have to blame the person in my mirror and no one else. And that is my friend, the type of responsibility that I am talking about.
Through choices we find ourselves, we explore our likes and dislikes and hopefully along our way with the right guidance, we will become who we want to become. There is no better feeling than thinking that you are on top of the world and every thing is available to you in life, if you just hustled and attempted to get it. Not like me who still blames the circumstances for not becoming a lawyer. God knows that I would have made a darn good one too. I still may, do you think that at 4t plus it is still doable? If not, I know whom to blame!
4 comments:
I think that what you said is truely correct. Choices do not hinder us, but rather they define who we are. They give us failures and triumphs but ultimately we learn about ourselves from these experiences.
It truly is different to live without choices. I spent the summer after my Jr. Year of HS in Paraguay and, for the first time, did not have choices. The market across the street only had one flavor of yogurt, so we'd eat it. There was only one way to get places (the perilous bus), so we'd take it. It was a tough adjustment at first, but after a while, I got used to it. Interestingly, it was my first trip to the grocery store after I returned that was the most difficult part of the whole summer. Yes, choices are interesting.
As Kinky Friedman, The Governor of Texas says, "May the God of your choice bless you."
4tplus,
I think your statement about choices is right. To have many choices to me makes us a better person. It gives you the oppurtunity to be able to define your life the way you want it to be defined. it also gives you room to make mistakes. If we didn't make mistakes we would never learn from them.
No matter how old you are it's never to late to fullfield a desire to be something. Everything in life is doable, if you want to be a lawyer then you should do it.
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