Choices

My brothers used to read Choose Your Own Adventure books.  You don’t read the book from cover to cover; you read then make a choice and go to another page based on your choice. You can reread the book many times and it can turn out differently based on your choices.

I didn’t like not knowing where the choices would lead me so I often read both choices and then made a choice depending on what happened. Of course, this ruins the whole idea of the book being different based on the readers choices.

Most of the time, our life is filled with choices that lead us on different adventures. Some choices are big and have a large impact. I chose in college to be an Early Childhood major instead of English major. I met different people and had different experiences because of that choice. I have even had a different career because of that choice. Sometimes the choice had a smaller impact i.e. choosing this apartment instead of that apartment. One apartment gave me different roommates and I met different people because of it. Either apartment would have been fine.

There are times when the choices are clearly right and wrong. Should I steal this car? Ummm, no that is a wrong choice.  Unfortunately, life is full of choices that aren’t as clear and the lines of right and wrong seem to become more and more blurred every day.

In one of the Harry Potter books Dumbledore says to Harry “Are you going to do what is right or what is easy?” I think more and more big choices take that kind of courage to make. It takes courage and strength to get everyone ready and get to church. It is easier not to go but the right thing to do is be there. It takes courage to tell your teenage kids I’m going to chaperone the dance on Friday night.  It takes courage to be the coach of your kid’s soccer team when you don’t know anything about soccer. But it is the right thing to do.

Most of the time our days are filled with choices where either is fine. Some are very obviously right or wrong and then there are those when it takes courage to make the right choice.