Choices

Ok, so here is something that’s been bothering me for a little while now. The other day I was having a conversation with a close friend of mine. It turned out to be quite the intellectual conversation if I do say so myself. My good friend who I will call Mitchell happened to disagree with something I had written in a previous article. Now I’m all for good conversation and constructive criticism so I asked him what was on his mind. In my article called “Memories” I talked a little bit about fate and destiny, I mentioned how I like to call these things just plain old luck of the draw. The disagreement began. Mitchell argued the point with me that in my situation luck nor fate nor destiny had anything to do with the outcome of events in my life. He argued that I had chosen my situation and I was the only one to blame for the consequences I was suffering. Now I didn’t disagree with that at all, I realize I made my own choices and I am dealing with the respective consequences, but the discussion went deeper than that. Mitchell argued that everything that happens to us in our lives is product of our own choices and I concur, to an extent. I posed a scenario to Mitchell, a scenario which I will pose to you now.

A man is walking down a path he has walked down many times before. Along this path he must walk past a short section of overhanging cliff. There have never before been any sort of dangerous circumstances associated with this cliff or anywhere else along the entire path. Though on this day things were different, something happened. A large piece of rock from the overhanging cliff above breaks off and lands on the man, he is paralyzed from the neck down.

Ok, so that’s the scenario. Now because Mitchell had told me he believed everything in life was product of our own choices I had to ask him to explain to me how this man chose to become paralyzed. Now obviously he didn’t directly choose to become paralyzed, but he did choose to take that walk. At this point in the conversation I partially agreed with Mitchell’s theory of choices, but not entirely. I told Mitchell I agreed to the fact that the man made the choice to take his walk, but my real question was deeper than that. I wanted to know what Mitchell thought could have made that rock fall at that exact moment in time. Now of coarse a rock can’t choose to fall but I was to find out that there were many scientific answers to that question such as erosion and wind and temperature. Mitchell explained to me how all of the perfect weather conditions combined could have absolutely caused that rock to fall. I agreed with him but I wanted more. I asked him what he thought made those weather conditions perfect on that day. Now, we argued pointlessly about this for a few more minutes and came to the conclusion that there probably wasn’t an answer to this question without beginning to discuss the realm of spirituality, so we let it be, for now. There was a method behind all of my madness, I said to Mitchell “Think about this man laying in his hospital bed knowing that he will never walk again, knowing that he will never be able to enjoy the things he used to enjoy. Don’t you think there will be emotions inside of him that wonder why did this happen, or who did this to him?” Mitchell promptly replied “Of coarse there will be.” I reached deep into the confines of my brain and posed my final question thinking that I would stump him with this one. “Who does this man blame for what happened to him, or how does he get closure without knowing why?” I have to say I was somewhat enlightened by Mitchell’s response. “He has to realize that no body is to blame for what happened to him and that even though he made the choice to take that walk there was probably nothing he could have done otherwise. He has to accept the things that have happened to him and he has to move on with his life in a new way, and that’s just a choice he has to make.” There it was, he was absolutely right, in the end it did come down to choices.

For myself and Mitchell this conversation was probably just a waste of forty minutes but by posting it here I hope that maybe it will enlighten somebody in the way it enlightened me. Our lives do revolve around the choices we make and that’s really good news for us because it means we’re in control. We have the final say in the things that happen to us. Although we might not be able to choose the situations we sometimes find our selves entangled in, we defiantly choose what we’re going to do about them. So the next time you’re in a real down and out situation try not to worry about how you got there and just remember it’s your choice that can get you out.

Jesse Roulette
Making Choices One at a Time