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This is the newborn son of a friend, he's a bit tiny yet but we got on pretty well.
The world ahead is full of possibilities for both of us, granted he's 40 years younger than me and may well get to walk on the moon, but I have to understand that my life is also full of possibilities and that the things that will determine those possibilities are my beliefs, my choices and my courage.
What do I believe? I believe that we as humans have the ability, nay the duty, to create a better future for ourselves and our children. I believe that we are not "victims" of fate or circumstance and that we can drive the bus ourselves. We get to "choose" the type of life we get to live, in fact we have already "chosen" the one we are living right now.
"two roads diverged in a yellow wood" the famous Robert Frost poem sums up very well the dilemmas we face every day, the movie "sliding doors" did a good job of attempting to show two simultanious realities caused by choices and how we are defined by the choices we make. The only bits we ever get evidence for is the current reality, but would that have been different if we had made different choices, of course it would, if i had decided to emigrate to England instead of going to college, what would my life look like now?
We tend to try to justify our past choices by being glad for the place we are in now and saying we "would'nt have it any other way" but thats rubbish, the reality is that once we make our choices we "could'nt have it any other way" until we get to make a new present or future choice.
So our choices don't only exist in the past, we have present and future choices too, and what my life looks like when baby Conor is 10 will simply be a consequence of the choices I choose to make over the next ten years.
I choose to be fantastic, to live huge, to grasp life in two big hands, I choose to let go of the past, to release it's hold over me, I choose to move on, I choose to take chances, to risk being laughed at, to stop settling for mediocrity. I choose to be braver.
and finally what of courage, what does it mean for me?
It means to begin living to my own instincts, my own gut. To stop living my life so that others will feel safe or approve. To stop seeing life through the lenses of the past and to start to see and explore the infinite possibility that remains in my life.
starting now!
