A matter of choice

LIFE’S LESSONS

By Henrylito D. Tacio

“The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.” – Heraclitus

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A boy wanted to be a hero, so one of the warriors and leaders of his clan taught him to hunt and fish and shoot with bow and arrow. Training was done day and night for several days.

Finally, the important day came when the boy was to make his first bow and arrow. That is a work of skill and patience, to be done from beginning to the end by one man. Most difficult is choosing the right wood from the right tree.

A day was chosen for selecting the wood. As the lad set out to choose the wood, his father made two conditions: First, once he had passed up a tree, he was never to consider it again. Secondly, once he made his choice, he was not allowed to change it.

Early in the morning, the boy started out. He tramped and tramped looking closely at one tree after another. He was almost near the edge of the forest, not many trees left, and so he had to make a choice, and he did.

But when he brought the young tree back home, his father told him that it was not the best. Then his father wisely asked the boy to think over his experience that day and tell him what he had learned from it. The boy thought and thought.

At last, he came to his father and said: “Father, I learned that once you make your choice, you cannot change it.”

Anne Frank said: “Our lives are fashioned by our choices. First, we make our choices. Then, our choices make us.” To which William Jennings Bryan added, “Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.”

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.

Aristotle said, “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.”

In Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk wrote: “You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. Every time you don’t throw yourself down the stairs, that’s a choice.”

Now, let me share with you a story sent to me by a friend via e-mail. Although it is short, the anecdote – which I have modified — talks more about life and the choices we make:

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 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 to a coin. Left and right. Good and bad. Beautiful and ugly. Rich and poor. Each of us is given a choice to make. And life is a lot like tennis – the one who can serve best seldom loses.

As Patrick Ness wrote in Monsters of Men: “Choices may be unbelievably hard but they’re never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that’s not how a person with integrity acts.” ― ###