I Admit - it is My Own Fault

I’ve gone down the wrong path so many times, it’s a wonder I am still alive. I’ve ignored perfectly sound advice to pursue what seemed at the time, a good idea and suffered the consequences. I’ve stood with my toes dangling over the edge of the crevasse, blindly leaning forward, too many times and every time, it was a conscientious choice I made, which put me in that position.

You see, we have the innate ability to justify every course of action or entertainment we desire, so ultimately, we do what we want, instead of what is good for us. We all do it, some more than others, but we all do it.

With few exceptions, it is always our choice. We choose to follow the crowd, or give into peer pressure. We choose to look the other way to validate our own actions. We make the decision to eat ice cream more often (and larger portions) than is healthy. We stay up later than we should and we know we will be sorry when we suffer at school or work the next day. We allow other people to aggravate and distract us and when we finally vent our frustration, we mentally give in to anger and excuse our own ugly behavior.

Life is one choice after another, a mental fork in the road a hundred times each day and we accept this as normal living. The key to true happiness and fulfillment is taking the correct path a high percentage of the time. Many times we fall back on common sense to guide us and this approach usually rewards us. Other times, we use an educated guess or extrapolation of facts and this also gives us a better chance of success. Occasionally, we are forced to make a choice using a gut feeling (for men) or women’s intuition (for ladies) and once again, we are afforded a higher chance of achievement in our future.

Making no choice or decision leaves our future open for an outside source and can have disastrous or tragic results. Destiny, karma and fate become our choice makers and almost always lead us down an unfamiliar path.

Procrastination is the thief of time. I heard a preacher say that one time and I never forgot it. Since we live in the present, tomorrow simply becomes right now and when it arrives and we face the same problems, solving nothing. Failing to balance your checkbook on the hope that there is plenty of money in the bank will surely be a disappointment and a direct result of procrastination. Putting off choices to a later date simply prolong the agony of a choice.

Maturity offers an advantage in decision making that teens and children simply do not have as an option and lest we mature adults forget; maturity is basically defined as having “learned things the hard way”. We do NOT do some things twice and it isn’t because our Moms and Dads told us it was a bad idea. We didn’t read that it was bad, or see it in a movie. It wasn’t because convention told us not to do it twice, that we avoid a second exposure. The reason we do not repeat some choices is – we learned their negative effect first hand and we, with true conviction, choose not to repeat the same mistake.

A psychologist told me we tend to be very critical about faults we see in others, if we are battling them ourselves. We don’t like these traits in ourselves, so we point them out in people we come in contact with. The very things we do not like about ourselves, we have trouble tolerating. Our choices are issued wholesale passes to justify our desires, but others do not get the nod from us when they indulge in the same rationalization.

My path is littered with bad choices, going all the way back to 1959, when at the ripe age of seven, I decided to smoke my first cigarette. Somehow I stumbled through life relatively unscathed, in spite of my stupid mistakes, to reach my current ripened state of maturity. I shouldn’t have, many times over and I don’t ever want to forget that fact, especially when people are suffering the loss of their children and loved ones.