Sunday, October 26, 2008

choices

It always amazes me how strongly people will argue when told they do everything by choice. They're so stuck on the "have-to" philosophy of life, it's hard for them to let go. I was teaching this concept recently to some high-school seniors in an elective phychology class. The example I used was "You chose to come to class this morning." I would have bet a month's salary that I could predict the first response. And, sure enough, it came. One of my favourite kids in the class said, "No way, man. I had to come to class." "No, you didn't," I said. "You chose to come." He then proceeded to reel off all the horrible things that would happen to him if he didn't attend class. When he was through with it, I said, "Right! You made a choice. Some of your classmates aren't here. For a variety of reasons, they chose not to come this morning. Maybe someone chose to get some extra sleep or take a whole day off. But you chose to be here."

Then he helped me make the most important point of all by saying, "But that's just another way of looking at it." "Thank you!" I said elatedly. "That's exactly what I want you to learn - to look at every day of your life that way, to see choices instead of have-to's."

At any given moment, we're free to chose what to think and what to do. God gave us a free will. No one can take it away from us. We can alter the course of our lives any time we want, because whatever we do, we do by choice. We can say we have to do things or that we're forced to, but the truth is that we do what we choose to do. It's a simple yet great discovery. Because once we realize that we do things by choice, we begin to accept greater responsibility for our own lives and to take more effective control over them. We're the results of our choices.

In both my high-school and university classes I frequently got questions that started with the words, "Do we have to...?" Do we have to know this? Do we have to do that assignment? Do we have to turn it in tomorrow? My answer was always the same: "No. You get to." The first time this happened in a new semester, I got puzzled looks, and occasionally some friendly sarcasm. Then I added the capper: "You don't have to do anything in life, but you get to do a lot of things. And one of the greatest things you'll ever get to do is become educated." Actually, we ended up having a lot of fun with that one, because for the rest of the semester my students began their questions with the words, "Do we get to...?" I loved it! Because it's really a much healthier way of looking at life. It reminds us that we have choices. We don't have to live. We get to live.

Most of the time, we fail to exercise our choices because we're not aware of having them. Yet, those choices are available to use every day of our lives. We can make changes in minor aspects of our life, or we can change our entire lifestyle just by making difficult choices. We can teach ourselves to deal more effectively with both circumstances and with people. In fact, we can change almost anything we do if we're aware of our choices and if our desire is strong enough.

The most important thing to understand about all of this is that at any given moment, we're making choices. Equally important is the need to understand we're the results of our choices. We can't choose what happens in our lives, but we can choose how to respond. We have the ability to survive hardship and overcome obstacles. We have the capacity to rise above negative circumstances because we have a free will, the freedom and power to choose. Human beings weren't designed to live by chance. We were designed to live by choice.

(extracted from the book "Life's Greatest Lessons: 20 Things That Matter by Hal Urban)

written by mmrk at 11:42 AM

Sunday, October 26, 2008

choices

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