Sometimes we look around at our lives and wonder what we ever did that landed us in THIS mess. Well, we made choices along the road that we took and those choices had consequences. Those consequences are what we live with every day. And each day that we live we continue to make more choices. So, if our lives are not exactly where we want them to be, maybe we should change the way we make choices. Listening to older folks talk, I often wonder if they realize that they really did choose to be where they are at the time. Some of them are so bitter and angry in their lives. They have no understanding of how they got there, and they blame everyone else for being where they are, but they made the choices in their lives themselves. Then I look at my own life and wonder at the choices I’ve made.

It’s the reason and the situation behind the choice that often gets us into trouble. Looking back at my life, there were times when I made choices based on the situation of the moment, and not on the basis of my personal life goals. Some of these choices are necessary, but more often than not, making a choice in the moment isn’t a good idea. Choices made without a conscious view of where the result will be taking you, are the choices that leave you wondering how you got there. Those are often the choices that you ‘blame’ others for making, though you made the choice yourself. The circumstances were not of your design, therefore you didn’t think about your choice. You allowed circumstances to make the choice for you. It wasn’t that you didn’t make the choice, but rather that you didn’t make a conscientious choice based on where you wanted to be. Your choice was in part a default, because of circumstances, you allowed your choice to be made by the situation rather than conscientiously deciding to follow your life goals.

These kinds of choices are often made when a parent or sibling is ill; we choose to be part of their lives rather than moving on in our lives and getting to where we wanted to be. We accept the ‘defeat’ of giving up a part of our dream to be the kind of person we want to be at the moment. If we acknowledge our reasons for making this choice and adjust our life goals accordingly, we become better for making the choice. If we maintain our dream as it originally was without making allowances for the events in our lives, however, the default choice becomes a ‘failure’ in our thought life, and we begin to become bitter and blame others for our choices.

Becoming bitter is another means of failure in making our own choices. If we allow bitterness and blame to become part of our thoughts, we loose control of our conscientious thoughts and choices, and eventually we are the result of a mass of choices made by default and we feel like failures as people. Our lives become something that we didn’t envision and we begin to find others to blame for our failures to make choices that would have followed our dreams and goals. As a result of this process we begin to deny that we had control over our lives and that denial leaves us bitter and lonely as people begin moving away from us and out of our lives when we attempt to control them.

As we make feeble attempts to control others, anger becomes part of our personality. We become bitter, angry, and controlling as we attempt to find someone to blame for the apparent misery that we have created in our lives. The older we are, when we realize the ‘failure’ of not meeting our goals and dreams, the more likely we are to sustain the bitter anger as we attempt to control others into achieving our goals.

We have another option.

We don’t have to accept the bitter failure and angry control as ‘our life’ if we make an effort to recognize that the choices that got us to that point were our own choices. If we accept the fact that our ultimate goal was not consistent with the choices that we made along the way, we can reevaluate the goals we set for our life and acknowledge the real goals that were inspiring our choices.

Scenario 1: Often one child in a family will grow up bearing the responsibility of caring for an aging parent, while the other children go off to seek their fortunes and create families of their own. Neither achievement is any less worthy of the noble title of ‘success’. Often the child who CHOOSES to nourish the needs of the aging parent finds himself/herself needing to be nourished in their older years, and feels neglected by life.

If that person allows that feeling of being neglected to harbor and manifest itself in their lives, it becomes bitter anger. It will evolve into a feeling of hatred toward those who the person feels ‘took advantage’. If that hatred is aimed at a person the child/grownup chose to take care of, it will become a guilty ambivalence and the person will take on the dimensions of abstract importance, giving creed to the choice to stay and nurture the person, but making the person (being cared for) bigger than reality.

That person will actually become almost ‘God-like’ in the mind of the person who chose to nurture them. This ‘God-like’ person becomes so important that all others are compared to that person in ways that are unfair and unreasonable, but the guilty feeling is somehow submerged by attempting to make others feel less important or less worthy. While making others feel less worthy isn’t necessarily the objective, it is the result of elevating the importance of another person, particularly someone who is deceased.

The same can be said of the children who follow their dreams and leave the nurturing of elderly parents behind. They are missing a key component in the journey of life. They are missing the experience of loving someone more than themselves and giving to that person. Their goal may be empty – without proper value at the end, and their lives may feel empty and incomplete.

The ideal of life as a destination is hollow and desolate. Life is a journey with many obstacles that change the path and rearrange the road we choose to travel. By understanding the value of the steps we take, we give credence to the journey and distinction to the goals we achieve.

Suppose that the person in our scenario chose to recognize his/her choices, adjust the dreams and goals to include the actualization of his/her choices, and accepted a different ultimate life goal as part of their reality. The anger, guilt, and ambivalence would be unnecessary and the bitterness would fade away. Life could again be pleasant and fun, because they didn’t fail. They didn’t have to see their dreams burn up into smoke, because they adjusted their life goals to match the decisions they were making in their lives. The alternative of this is to maintain your choices in line with your life goals. Few of us are willing to blindly follow a goal that we chose as teenagers, so some adjustment is necessary as we make choices and mature in our lives.

Scenario 2: Entering college a guy has a dream of getting out, getting the job of his dreams, marrying the girl his heart has pictured, buying the car, the house, the dream. However, as the days go by, his education seems less important and that girl across the park looks better and better, so they go out and she gets pregnant, they get married, he can’t afford to continue in college, he gets a job, they can’t afford a car, they barely can afford an apartment, and the dream is disappearing a little every day. HE feels trapped, so does she. He blames her; she blames him. Who made the choices? They each made choices that didn’t follow their life goals, and the consequences are that their life goal is fading.

They can hang onto the goal and feel failure or they can adjust their goal to include the choices they made. If they choose to feel the failure, they are ultimately choosing a very bitter road to travel, the guilt of feeling angry toward the person they promised to love, honor, and cherish will eventually become bitterness and the love they felt will become unbearable.

A marriage will be wrecked and a child will hurt because two people didn’t accept the reality of their own choices and adjust their expectations to include the changes in their lives. So what is their option? Do they have to allow their failure to proceed toward their goals to ruin a life that could be well lived? Can they choose another goal and make better choices?

A life is made up of choices and decisions that lead us to our goals. Our goals can be the specific direction we choose in life as a teenager, or the adjusted and accepted goals that we determine as we move through life making decisions based on the circumstances and situations that we experience. The destination does not determine the value of success. The value of success is the cost of what you gave up to get there.

Are you willing to give up your values to get to your life goal, or is your life goal made up of your values? It’s a personal choice, often one that is made with many tears and heartaches along the way. Obstacles can become devastating to our goals, or they can become part of the journey.

By making choices along the way and accepting the changes that happen in our lives, we suddenly are able to control the happiness we encounter along the way. Is your goal to get there no matter what? Or is your goal to enjoy the path along the way? Whichever is your goal, are you willing to pay the price? Have you figured the cost of reaching for your destination?

E-mail: janverhoeff@yahoo.com