On our way home today we drove by a high school reader board that read "congrats class of 2011, make positive choices".
I found this selection of works to be simple, very subjective, and yet, poignant. It made me reflect on the choices I've made since high school and think about how many of them have been positive. I know, the term positive is a very subject term and can be taken in many ways: for whom were my choices positive; was the choice positive even if the outcomes were negative but I learned a lesson; blah blah blah etc etc. You get the point.
How many of us can make positive decisions all of the time? If our answer was 0 percent, then you are correct! Also, a decision I view as positive may seem negative to you, or in hindsight, may also seem negative to me...
Each of our lives is nothing more than a series of microsecond decisions and repercussions from those decisions. I choose to back up and let some kid cross the road and thus roll in to the car behind me (yes, true story, and my only accident in 12 years of driving). Overall, I feel I have made good decisions during my time here in this world. I think about the effects my actions will have on others prior to acting (many times to the point of fault), and work with the information at hand to make the most educated decision possible for myself every minute of every day. I am sure not everyone is as insanely analytic about their personal lives as I am, but I am sure that you all have your own unconscious personal decision-making process.
How many decisions do you make every day and where might you be if you had made a different choice? Was your decision a positive one? Would your other decision have been negative since the decision you made was positive? It's a bit like those Choose Your Own Adventure books from when I was a kid, but this is real life, people!
So, back to what instigated this conversation, the highs school reader board. Rather than encouraging people to make positive decisions, or even worse, to make "good" decision, how about encouraging people to make the best decisions they can for themselves at the moment they are making the decision?
I guess that would be tough to fit on a reader board though...
