How The Choices We Make Shape Our Lives
Our existence comprises of choices that we make. From drinking milk in the morning to attending your least favorite lecture, from buying a blue shirt instead of a green shirt at your favorite store to adding an extra spoon of sugar in your coffee, from painting your bedroom wall pink to drunk-dialing your crush — you take a plethora of decisions, make choices, and bear the consequences. Choices are everywhere. Despite our parents making most of our decisions for our better and brighter future when we’re very young, we start learning how to choose between the options placed strategically in front of us and make decisions.
The choices you make and the decisions you take have a long lasting impact on your life. They make us special, put a bar of distinction between us and everyone else. Our lives are a series of choices we’ve made so far. We live with those choices for the rest of our lives — and believe me when I say this, the rest of your life is a pretty long period. Whether you feel it immediately or not, your life is being shaped by the choices you are making in the present.
Whether you decide to go to college or take that painting class you always wanted to or get your hair colored in shades of rainbow or travel to foreign lands alone — it’s your choice. It is all your choice. It has always been your choice. The past is unalterable yet offers you an insight on the mistakes you made. The present is a gift you need to make the best of, and the core of your future comprises each and every decision you have ever taken.
I, for one, decided to pursue my graduation degree in Political Science, but after 3 months of attending college lectures, making assignment deadlines, and giving interviews for plethora of extracurricular societies and meeting new people, I began to wonder if I had made the right choice. The question of whether or not I should have taken this subject started to bug me, resulting in fluctuating sleep patterns and subsequent decline in diet. The never ending scope of ‘what-ifs’ flooded me .
What if I had gone for Economics? What if I had chosen some other college? What if I had pursued Law? What if I had gone abroad?
It was later that I realized that the decision I made for myself was right all along. I was afraid that the choice I had made might have directly affected my future, and might have been wrong. I didn’t want to end up blaming myself for not succeeding, because in choosing to study political science, I hadn’t been faltering or steering away from my priorities. If it wasn’t the right choice, it would have been for reasons beyond my control. We don’t like giving up that control.
Sometimes, we make bad choices and often brim with misery and regret when we realize our mistake. That’s part of being human. When I flip through my diary and go over the deeds my past self had once engaged in, instead of being ashamed of who I was or what I’ve done, I want to be proud of myself and my choices. I want to be happy with what I wore, what I said, what I read, what I ate, what I listened to, and what I did. And this is only possible if I think before I make choices in the present.
We can’t undo the past, but we can always learn from it. Choices are the building blocks of our lives and despite all the mistakes one makes, a new day brings with itself new opportunities and a whole new world of choices.
Remember that the choice is yours. It has always been. 