“Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives – choice, not chance, determines your destiny.” ― Aristotle
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Robert Frost is one of the most famous American poets but oftentimes people misunderstood the message he wanted to impart in his poems. But in “The Road Not Taken,” the first poem in the collection “Mountain Interval,” the message is very clear: choices.
“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, / And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler, long I stood / And looked down one as far as I could / To where it bent in the undergrowth,” Frost wrote.
He had a hard time deciding which road to take but in the end, he “took the one less traveled by.” He wrote: “Because it was grassy and wanted wear; / Though as for that the passing there / Had worn them really about the same.”
Life has been defined as the sum total of all a person’s choices. From the cradle to grave, we are faced with many important decisions. Life, so goes a popular saying, is what we make it. In other words, you are what you are from the decisions you have made.
Dr. Charles Wood, longtime head of the psychology department at Baylor University, used to tell his students: “There are three decisions each person must make for himself – the choice of a profession, of a life’s mate, and of a religious faith. Parents and friends will, at times, try to decide one of these things for you, but if you are to be happy and successful in life, they are decisions you alone can make.”
Concerning our choices, Joseph Epstein in his book Ambition: The Secret Passion, wrote: “We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epic, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death.”
Epstein added: “But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live: courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. We decide that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do.”
He ended his explanation with these words: “But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed.”
According to J. Richard Sneed, our lives in this world can be described in one of these four ways: as a journey, as a battle, as a pilgrimage, and as a race. “Select your own metaphor, but the finishing necessity is all the same,” he wrote. “If life is a journey, it must be completed. If life is a battle, it must be finished. If life is a pilgrimage, it must be concluded. And if it is a race, it must be won.”
The words of Sneed came to my mind while reading an e-mail sent to me by a friend. It’s a short anecdote but it tells more about life and our choices. I have modified a little bit but read the story, anyway:
A week before their college graduation, seven friends went to the office of their professor and talked with him. “Sir,” one of them said, “is it possible if eight years from now we will meet in your house and have a reunion?”
The professor answered affirmatively. Several years passed and the seven friends became very successful in their chosen fields. Jonathan is now heading his own business firm in Makati, Philippines. Rudy is a highly-respected forester working in a United Nations agency in Rome, Italy. Gary has a flourishing career as a consultant in Bangkok, Thailand. Anselmo is a renowned physician in Cebu City, Philippines.
The three others – Carlos, Rodel, and James – are all engineers working in other parts of the world: Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and Canada, respectively.
Eight years later, all seven got together at their professor’s house. Talk, talk, talk, and more talk. Soon, conversation turned into complaints about stress in work and life.
Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, some plain looking and some expensive and exquisite, telling them to help themselves to hot coffee.
When all the seven friends had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking, expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. It is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves. And that is the source of your problems and stress. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the better cups and are eyeing each other’s cups”
The professor continued: “Now, if life is coffee, then the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life, but the quality of life doesn’t change. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee in it.”
Life is a matter of choice. There are always two sides of a coin. Left and right. Good and bad. Beautiful and ugly. Rich and poor. Each of us is given to be what we want to be. Life is a lot like tennis – the one who can serve best seldom loses.
In The Light in the Heart, author Roy T. Bennett reminded: “Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.”
