Choice: Do You Have What It Takes?
If you’ve stopped to take a moment out of your hectic schedule to read this blog (or maybe not hectic if you’re reading this), you’ve made a choice. Nobody put a gun to your head, the choice was yours, and yours alone. And as such, you exercised an inalienable, but often sadly trounced upon right of the human condition: the right to choose. For without choice, freedom can’t exist. Freedom begets choice, and where freedom stops, choice ends. When choice ends, slavery begins.
Naturally, there isn’t a freedom-loving person alive who wouldn’t admit to not loving choice. Choice is the essence of freedom; a freedom, that so long as it doesn’t bring harm to others, allows us to do whatever we may please (somewhere in this sentence lies the root of all politics). But as we proudly proclaim our love of choice, do we really have what it takes to choose?
As children, our parents do most of the choosing for us. As we grow older and become adept in the ways of the world, we branch out on our own (at least in theory), and start to make our own choices. We become independent people, enjoying choice on our own terms. But it’s at this point, where the lines of what it means to have choice (i.e. freedom) often become blurry. For somewhere down the line, many of us pick up the notion that we’re entitled to have choice (and we are), but that we’re not entitled to paying for the consequences that often come with having that choice. Do you follow?
Choice is neither for the faint of heart, nor the weak of stomach, but for those who boldly accept the responsibilities of their choices (see Be Bold and Seize the Moment…). This isn’t easy, but if we’re to lead a life of choice (i.e. freedom), we can’t have it any other way. The moment we accept that others should pay for our choices gone amok, is the moment we lead ourselves down the path of dependence to the road of servitude. For when others pick up the tab, it’s only a matter of time before we trade choice for chains.
Call it a suspicious nature, but when I see politicians on the six o’clock news promising the next best cure to society’s ills, whatever they may be, I think that somewhere lurking below the announcements are people wanting to give up their choices in lieu of having someone else (in this case government) make their choices for them. And although the intentions may be good, abdicating choice can never be so, for when we abdicate choice, we accept that we’re no longer masters of our own destiny. We accept that others know what’s better for us than we ourselves do.
British author George Eliot (1819-1880) wrote that “The strongest principle of human growth lies in the human choice.”
If so, then we must never shun choice, for it is choice that allows us to grow; it is choice that gives meaning to our lives, and it is choice that gives us our freedom. Do you have what it takes?
For more, check out The C.A.T. Principle: Change, Action, Trust – Words to Live By, a Global Ebook Awards GOLD Winner for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook of 2014, available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. See the latest Amazon reviews here. Now revised and expanded, and once again nominated for the Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook of the 2015 Global Ebook Awards!
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A 2014 Global Ebook Awards GOLD Winner for Best Non-fiction Self-help Ebook.
2015 Global Ebook Awards Nominee for Best Self-Help Non-Fiction Ebook