The Choice— GC Myers
What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
I have been thinking and writing a lot about our ability to choose lately. Our life and all it encompasses consists of and is shaped by our choices. We even have, as Anaïs Nin asserts above, the ability to choose to alter our character and, therefore, our destiny.
It’s puzzling to me that having this choice hasn’t made the world a better, kinder and gentler place. We can choose to be better. Choose to be kind or gentle. Choose to be forgiving. Choose to be generous and fair minded.
Yet we often make none of those choices. Why?
Oh, I don’t have any answers. Plenty of guesses and half-baked theories, the most obvious being that people don’t want to have to choose, especially when it requires thought or mindfulness. Most will take what is placed before them because to do so alleviates them of taking responsibility. Without personal culpability, they feel free to moan and complain and place blame on others. And these are the seeds, the starting points, for hatred, greed and envy.
And these, too, are choices.
Mindful choice and the accountability that comes with it might well serve as a buffer, a deterrent against these darker choices.
That’s one theory but, f course, I don’t really know. I don’t even know why I chose to write this this morning. Probably for myself more than anything, to serve as a reminder that I still have the choice to be the person I wish to be.
A reminder to be alert and mindful.
Or just my way of cutting this world in two to see what is eating at its core, as the late poet Langston Hughes writes below.
Like the title, I too am tired. But do what you will with this world– it’s your choice.
Tired— Langston Hughes
Redtree Times 
Leave a Reply