EVERYDAY CHOICES
Tuesday, October 20, 2020
Time is short.
There’s none to waste.
Someday, sooner than many of us wish to think, these choices may no longer be an option. Others will decide; others will choose what food we eat, where we sleep, and whether we get outside to feel the air on our face and hear birds. Others will pick our lifestyles and choices for us, as parents once did when incapable of our own decisions. Diapers too? That depends. Then death. I’m not preaching gloom, not sugar-coating, just compressing time for discussion purposes …
Going forward, at anything, is one part joyful forward thrust and one part hesitation. As a child, I recall resistance in trying new things, learning, as we all do at some point, the influence of others push/urge us forward or allow us to retreat …
In the mid-parts of our life, the momentum of things carry us from task to task, and role to role, without time for debate – we do what must be done in the smartest way possible. Our wishes get swiftly set aside when education, careers, child-rearing, and survival in the marketplace fills every day’s agenda.
But the following chapters lack both of those dynamics; no dad pushing us or mom allowing us to retreat, no spouse or boss urging us to grab some proverbial brass ring or to console us in our failings, there will always be tomorrow, there will be another day of choice.
Choice of doing something or doing nothing. Mean something, or mean nothing. Every day, full or empty, just choose. Every day, alone or not, just choose.
Every day, live or die, just choose.