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Insights from the Pavement: Choosing When

On the road, we have nothing but choices. Where will we visit next? What type of cuisine are we in the mood for? Will it be a bus or a train? Should I go and talk to that interesting group of locals?

Regardless of where we find ourselves in the world, we are always going to be faced with a choice. Whether that choice is to go left, or right, or to stay put right where we are, we are indeed making a choice. However, there are a few things in this life that none of us gets to choose.

Not a single person alive or dead got to choose where or when or to whom they were born. We don’t get any say in what language we will learn first or what color we are. We don’t get to choose when our natural lives will end.

The good news is that in between our births and our deaths, most of us will have a world of choices to mull over and mete out before our time comes. We can fill this time with amazing memories, or we can do very little. We can charge after our goals and aspirations, or we can take up space and resources. We can choose to help and to give things back to the world and to the community that supports us, or we can simply consume.

Whatever we choose, we should all be keenly aware that we are indeed choosing one of many options. Because even choosing to do nothing is still a choice. And the best compass for gauging whether or not we are living up to our potential is if, when we look at the lives of others, we see ourselves behind, in the middle or ahead of the game.

Death is our final show. And it arrives to most of us without taking our schedules into consideration. And in the grand scale of geologic time, none of us lives very long. So it can truthfully be said from that perspective that we all can choose right now to act or right now to do nothing.

But we should make no mistake – we are indeed choosing when it will happen.

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Insights from the Pavement: Being Decisive

It’s only when we choose our path that we will see where the road leads. And this is as true of our time on the road as it is in our personal lives.

The power to make decisive action is often the difference between seeing something new and seeing the same things over and over. And it’s in our nature as the offspring of a nomadic species to seek out new experiences, learn from them and grow into better people.

Making choices is always difficult. Whether it’s sending our children to a better school, taking on a new job or simply which route to take to work. Decisions are difficult because we know that they will each have a lasting effect on our day, week, year, or possibly even further.

But while this is something that most people might seek to limit as much as possible, it’s those of us who have made the most decisions in our lives that are rewarded by the widest range of experiences, and therefore the most knowledge gained through these experiences.

Being indecisive, on the other hand, will always limit us, keep us stagnant and hold us back from the progress that is awaiting us with the lessons that we need to better ourselves in this life. And whether or not we wish our choices to present themselves to us at the time they arrive, we still must all face them as we have all the others in the past.

So we must weigh our options responsibly, taking into consideration what will make us happy, make our decision, and stand behind it vehemently — knowing that ultimately this one decision is not the difficult part; it’s the follow-through that challenges us the most. And so it may not be the decision that intimidates us. Breaking down the post-decision activity, then, may well make things easier.

No matter what we choose, we must never look back and think regretfully of our effort to make the decision. The action of pursuing our choices passionately, is the natural conclusion to having worked so hard at choosing appropriately.