"Choices"

People underestimate the power of choices. They do so for a wide variety of reasons; socialists deliberately undermine the power of choice, because people who believe their choices don't matter are much easier to convince that they should let the government "take care" of them. Those who advocate professional victimhood would have you believe that choices are unimportant, because if you can choose, then you're choosing to remain a victim.

But here's the thing. As a rational adult, the only thing you control in your life is your choices. You are not, and cannot be, responsible for the decisions and actions of anyone else; only your own. This same, incidentally, is why I reject wholeheartedly the notion of so-called "original sin." Holding me personally responsible for the actions and choices of someone dead for thousands of years before I was born is utterly ridiculous; the reason - if you buy the theory that they're not - that humans aren't equipped to deserve Heaven is that we're not omniscient, and therefore unable to understand, or comprehend, the Big Picture.

Interestingly, many of the proponents of the idea of original sin understand its illogic in other contexts; just not in religion.

For example: I'm white. In my lifetime, I have never owned a slave; never oppressed anyone; I don't make racist comments, or tolerate those who do; and yet, despite my personal convictions and beliefs, there is a significant movement on the part of people like Louis Farrakhan to demand - from the American taxpayer, in other words me - so-called "reparations" for slavery, because I'm white, and therefore supposedly responsible for the choices of people long dead - and their effects on people long dead.

I would willingly bet that many people, reading that paragraph, would agree that the notion is ridiculous, but turn around and accept, with gaping mouth, the fishhook of original sin: you need the church, because of something someone long dead did that's YOUR FAULT.

And people wonder how I can both have absolute, unswerving faith in the existence of God - and simultaneously hate and fear organized religion.

Back to my point about choices; "The Big Scary Controversial Religion Post" will be up soon enough.

You make choices every day; you have to. Even choosing not to make a choice, is a choice. There's no real escape from that; as a human being you have choices. And you're only responsible for yours; but, see, YOU are responsible for your choices. No-one else is, or can be.

Some of those choices are easy; some are hard; some of them will break your heart.

But ALL of them are yours.

I recently had an experience you've no doubt all shared to some degree; I wrote a blog post that turned into "the one that got away." When I read it - before posting - to my wife, she was sniffling before I was done, which is a sign that I'd really gotten it right.

Click "Post."

"Error - server is unavailable."

And just like that, because I had forgotten to copy it to Metapad first, *poof* all my eloquence, instantly gone.

I admit, I swore a blue streak.

But I couldn't fix it; my first post about choices, totally obliterated, because I made a choice to be less-than-careful with my backups.

Oh, the irony.

But the idea I was driving at is still there.

I posted a quote on my front page a few days ago; it's thought-provoking. Somewhat repackaged, it is: "I gave MY LIFE to become who and what I am today. Was it worth it?"

That's not an easy question, if you're honest about it. Give it a try. Go to your mirror, and look straight into your own eyes. Ignore your surroundings; ignore your appearance; ignore who you HOPED to be, and who you wanted to be, and who you dreamed of being, and look dead into the eyes of who you ARE.

Ask yourself that question.

Was it worth it?

Is who you are, right this minute, unflinchingly honest with yourself, worth every choice you've made to get there? Every dream you've set aside, hope you've abandoned, friend you've hurt - maybe even unknowingly - enemy you've made, tantrum you've thrown, every hurtful thing you've said or done, every action you've seen to be wrong in retrospect; was it worth that?

Looking into your own eyes, honestly, are you who you want to be?

Why not?

You have choices, always. There IS no such thing as a situation where you are without choices. There are situations where the choices are hard, even heartbreaking. But not making those choices is a choice, as well.

Do you think Terry Schiavo's husband was making an easy choice? I think it broke his heart. And I think it might well have hurt him so badly that he might never really recover. I know if I ever had to make that choice, it would utterly destroy me. I also know I would make the same choice he did.

A cancer patient makes choices; whether to fight, or simply die; whether to use it, and grow, or give up.

A drug addict, the same; treatment and help are there, and everyone knows it; someone who stays addicted chooses that, every time they get high. Is choosing treatment and recovery hard? Yes. Even heartbreaking. But it is a choice.

A person abused as a child grows up, eventually. And they have choices. I know. I'm one of them. And it colors your judgement; it adds a filter to the way you see the world. But you know why I'm not an abuser? Because you have a choice. When my wife irritates me, I choose not to swing at her, every time. I choose not to beat my son bloody for minor misbehavior, or send him to the hospital, as often as it happened to me.

We all have choices.

And the people who say you don't - the people who try to excuse a rapist, on the grounds that he was abused or molested as a child, are really saying, to everyone who's ever been abused and NOT turned into a rapist, that the reason they were able to make that choice is that they weren't abused enough.

I had a rough time as a kid. Lots of people had the same or worse. And yet they, and I, manage to get through it, because we made - and continue to make, every day - a choice.

If choice is meaningless, if choice is nothing, you're saying to every person who's ever beaten an addiction that they weren't addicted enough. That they only had those choices because they didn't smoke enough crack, or shoot enough heroin, to take those choices away from them.

And that's not true. Breaking the abuse cycle; beating addiction; staying strong under chemotherapy; those are all choices that are HARD. There's nothing easy about not giving up. But the fact that anyone can do it at all says that claims of victimhood are a lie.

I look at myself in the mirror, and I can answer that question, "was it worth my life, my hopes, dreams, and ambitions, to be who and what I am today?"

Who I am today, is someone who's beaten, and broken, the abuse cycle, and continues to do so every day.

Who I am today, is someone who has beaten alcoholism - I joke about it, but you can ask my wife - who has beaten smoking (fifteen years of three packs a day) and broken the addiction cycle, by making choices, and then sticking to them.

Who I am today is someone who's lost loves, and loved ones, sacrificed dreams, given away hopes and aspirations, and somehow, along the way, chosen to be content.

I work in a hard, low-wage job, that I'm vastly overeducated for, and stuck in because of my choices.

I drive a shitty car.

We never have the money to do spontaneous things of any magnitude.

I am estranged from much of my family.

I have few friends.

But the family and friends I have, I cherish; I have friends that - I don't think, I know from seeing them do it - would take a bullet, or bloody their hands forever, for me.

My own hands bear, from my own choices, stains of blood and pain that will never, ever wash clean.

But I got them in the service of an ideal that I see with steely-eyed clarity, even if you do not.

I got them because of a choice.

I chose to give up my home, many acquaintances, my job, my chance to be with my father in his last years, working on repairing our relationship, my environment; all to be with a woman my friends told me was so very wrong for me.

I chose to accept her love, and give mine, rather than search for a perfect fit; and somehow it turned out to be a perfect fit anyway.

And my choices have led me to a place where I can look into my own eyes in a mirror and answer yes.

It was worth it.

Every choice that led me here, from the inconsequential to the heartbreaking, was worth it.

And every day, I make a new choice; to improve. To grow, and learn, and become better, every day.

I believe that THAT is what God truly wants from us; not perfection, but our choices, or we wouldn't have so many of them.

I can look in the mirror and take ownership of who I am, who I've been, who I am choosing to become. I can look at the stains of my choices on my hands and accept that no-one else made those decisions for me.

I am proud of who I am; you don't have to be proud of me, or applaud, or even care.

But I can look in the mirror and say, "it was worth it."

Can you?

And if not, how long will you choose to remain someone who can't say that?

People can change; most of them don't.

And that's a choice.

You answer to yourself, only, and always; do so. If you can't say yes, if you can't be that honest, ask yourself why.

And then choose to become someone who CAN say that it was worth it.

You owe that to all the people you could have been.