Choices

It’s so cliché but so true.  Life is all about choices.  We make them everyday.  Are we going to get up and get going on what needs to be done with a good attitude or are we going to just roll over and go back to sleep?  Choices aren’t always easy and the consequences we face because of our choices aren’t always good but you make a choice and you live with it and persevere.

So, why is it that we are constantly looking back thinking what if?  What if I would have finished graduate school before I had kids?  The truth of the matter is once choices are made there should be no what if because the paths we choose have brought us to the point we are and it is from that point we must move forward and persevere.  Sure, it’s okay to look back and learn from what we think are mistakes from the past but we must be careful of is not to let the what if turn into I wish I would have because no matter how hard we wish we can’t turn back time.

This seems easy enough and yet it is so difficult because our realities sometime leave us in desperate feeling situations and we want to turn back the hands of time and change some of our choices but unfortunately we can’t.  My therapist tells me not to dwell on the what ifs because there is only the what is.  Why is it so hard?  Is it because I am not happy with my life?  My faith would tell me to focus on what the Bible says in which case I should be content but I am not and yet I feel like I am doing what God wants me to do but maybe just maybe life isn’t always about being fully content.

I just wish life could be so much easier and being content came easier for me.  I know my therapist would tell me it’s not my fault it’s my mental diseases (bipolar, OCD, and panic attacks).  Sometimes I feel these are just excuses for the way I am.  Who knows?  I am tired as I know many are with making choices and then constantly second guessing myself.  So the question is, “What do we do once we have made certain choices and we don’t find what we are looking for?”  This is the hardest question of all because some initial choices limit your second choices.  Therefore, I think the bottom line is we all do the best we can and move on from there and try our hardest not to look back and play the I wish I could turn back the hands of time game.  Life will never be easy as will never our choices.

Therefore, all we can do is to keep going and persevere.  My favorite quote is from Calvin Coolidge and he said, “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence.  Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent.  Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.  Education will not, the world is full of educated derelicts.  Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.  The slogan “press on” has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”