And Now It’s Up To You: Choices
Over the past couple of years, a lot of traditions have been kicked to the curb. I’m glad the pomp and circumstance of high school graduation isn’t one of them. Something about medieval robes and silly mortarboards held in place by reems of bobby pins says the individuals wearing them are somebody—somebody going somewhere—somebody going somewhere toward something--even if they haven’t figured out the particulars yet. And that is such good news. Their percolating potential gives us all a little gas.
We dupe the up-and-comers unintentionally though, at the outset sometimes, by riffing platitudes and telling them all kinds of things that sound good but, in reality, are not true. We want so much to be helpful by making them hopeful. But, they’re far better at handling the truth than we mostly give them credit for. Hope is way more durable and diverse than we like to admit, too. Plus, truth is typically easy to work with—it has borders you can feel. When you can get and keep your bearings, you can keep moving, no matter how limited the visibility or how bumpy the road.
Those just beginning their journeys deserve to know what those of us who have been traveling for a while know even if it’s not super sexy and no one is clamoring to put it on a poster or a pillowcase. What follows is the first of three things I have discovered along this journey to be true…
The ability to choose is a superpower. Unfortunately, many of us give that power away. We get so enraged when we feel as if our freedom of choice is being abridged, and yet we often fail to exercise our God-given ability to make the ones that will be the big-time determiners in the quality of our lives. We aren’t all born even. But the ability to make choices is one thing that’s doled out in equal parts.
For starters, we all get to choose our disposition every day. Contrary to popular belief, our circumstances don’t determine that. We do. Voltaire once said, “The best decision you can ever make is to be in good mood.” He was so simply smart it’s scary. Good dispositions are supple. Choosing to be happy and hopeful and kind and present changes the literal fiber of the world. Our moods provide the connective tissue that gets us from here to there. And yet I leave mine up to happenstance more than I care to admit. Intentionally choosing your disposition sets the stage for good things to grow.
We also get to choose how we feel about ourselves. We used to hand that job off to significant others like our mamas and our teachers and bosses and our friends. (Even though it wasn’t their job, nor will it ever be.) But now, in addition, we give it to strangers—people we don’t and won’t ever know. We let anonymous opinion-sharers determine how we feel about ourselves. What kind of crazy pill did we take to make us think that that makes sense? Self-esteem is an inside job. The responsibility for how we feel about ourselves will always and forever belong singularly to us.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” No one can make you feel superior either. (Or whatever middle feeling fits in between those two.) If they do, it’s just a condition that will quickly run its course. Legitimate self-esteem—the kind that isn’t judgy, emotional, outcome based, or outwardly sourced –doesn’t have a course to run. It is the course. The understanding that we are both simultaneously unique creatures, special in ways no one else has been or ever will be, and also tiny specks of dust in this enormous, complicated world is the Buddha beam on which it’s best to balance as we inch our way through life. This ying-yang view of oneself is what drives us to be kind when no one’s around to see it, or to finish a race when we’re out of contention, or to refuse to neglect the tiniest things. Og Mandino said, “It doesn’t matter what others think but it is of prime importance what you think.” And yet we shell out free admission to our belief systems as if the way we feel about ourselves is a massive group project. When and where and why did we get so casual about such an integral thing? Nothing more directly and indirectly impacts the quality of our lives than how we choose to feel about ourselves.
And maybe the biggest “give-away choice” of all those so distinctly within our control is the choice we have about how we will respond. All kinds of things happen to us constantly without our consent. Good things, bad things, and a whole host of things that are sometimes good and sometimes bad. Kelly Corrigan recounts on her podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, the timeless two-thousand year old story of a farmer she calls Joe and his horse she calls Old Red. As a series of happenings tabbed by neighbors as either “good” or “bad” occur, Farmer Joe consistently responds to each, “We’ll see.” The ultimate take-away being the age-old truth that things typically work out best for those who make the best of the way things work out. “Tending to your crop daily as best you can”—Farmer Joe’s way of making his way through life--seems to be the driving force toward happiness (and if not happiness, at least the absence of angst) regardless of the hand you are dealt.
We don’t always get a say in the cards. But we do get to decide how we play them. Contentment is hardly ever about what happens to us, and it is almost always about what we choose to think and do about it when it does.
The world looks so much different when we don’t give our power away.
Sherri Coale
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