Sliding doors

Have you ever wonder what would’ve happened if a different decision was taken at a certain moment of your life? I am not necessarily talking about huge stuff like launching the atomic bomb or passing a controversial bill; but small, daily and apparently immaterial choices that could be the difference between our current life and a totally different one.

A few days ago on Facebook I read a status pondering “how seemingly-small decisions and moments can change entire lives…” and the flow of comments that followed with specific situations, or “what if” scenarios, from the fact that someone’s parents met on a blind date to the split second decisions that cause car accidents and the serendipity behind finding the right person at the least expected place where you were not supposed to be. Breaking up with your high-school sweetheart to follow your career and, years later, wondering if that person with the multiple children and a sad look could have been your husband (making you the abnegated wife and mother of too many).

Destiny, faith, the book of life… is our future really marked and determined by our past? If so, is it changeable or controllable? Freewill is a powerful term that in theory gives us control of our acts, up to a point of voluntarily making mistakes; freewill should come with a warning: use only if you can take full responsibility of the consequences (good or bad). But it gets even more complicated than that, because our acts and so called responsible decisions are not just going to affect us individually – most of the times (if not always), they have a chain reaction among others: our family, neighbors, colleagues, acquaintances, even the friendly strangers…we touch and change lives by the minute, without even noticing.

There is no way to anticipate the unknown, no matter how hard we try, it is just humanly impossible. We should of course plan ahead and have goals, knowing that, as exhausting an exercise as it can be trying to prevent and taking care of everything, we are still in charge of our actions therefore liable for their immediate, short or long-term consequences…an endless loop of cause and effect…the undeniable gift of freewill.

On daily basis we face situations requiring choices; and every choice, has a handful of consequences, benefits, complications, reactions. Decisions....decisions… decisions. Let’s assume for a minute here that our future is not controllable and that, no matter what we decide or what we do, the final result won’t change , that we only get to pick the “how” but not the “where”…the destiny and the duration of the journey is not known and won’t be revealed….and remember: we are not alone! So for sure we will be affected by others and others will be affected by us.

Do we want to live our “how” on daily basis and make it an intense, generous, worth remembering-attitude changing-contagious positive reaction one? Or do we rather stop living and wait patiently, effortlessly, insipidly and selfishly for something that may happen someday, in a futile attempt of not altering the fragile result of a mysterious “where”.

I want to believe that by living a life with awareness and without remorse of the choices made while following your gut, instincts, senses and heart, we can make our “how” become our “where”… by the end of each day.

"You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;

I will choose a path that's clear

I will choose freewill." Rush