''Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make
makes you.''
(John C. Maxwell)
The first time I met him he was smoking a huge cigar.
He was leaning back in a cozy chair, legs wide apart and with
an arrogant smirk on his face pontificating about
how stupid and feebleminded people are.
With the confidence of an Evangelical preacher he was
preaching the gospel of Greed and how the procurement of
money was the only thing in life worth fighting for.
I did not like him and although he was a family friend,
I made sure to be unavailable as often as possible
when he came for visits.
My mother (who had noticed my disappearing act)
once asked me what it was about him that
I disliked so much.
Fumbling for words to describe verbally how his
presence affected me ''physically'', I told her
that when he was in the room I felt as if he brought with
him a numinous(unphysical) presence of malevolence,
cynicism, unkindness and condescension.
(In hindsight, I guess I could have just said that
he oozed really bad vibes.)
The story goes that he had a bad upbringing and that
he joined the merchant navy at 15 years old.
From there he had done all sorts of jobs and slowly
by being (in is view) smart he had managed to become wealthy.
His motto being ''Greed is good'' was his guiding
life principle. Kindness, generosity and compassion had
no place in his life. Not even in regards to his wife, children,
sibling and friends.
When he made choices he made them based on:
''what's in it for me, and what's the payout''.
Making a long story shorter, eventually old and sick
his choices lead him to spend his last days in a
private hospital bed hooked up to a number of
life support machines with no hope of recovery.
Was it not for his longsuffering and compassionate
sister and ever loving and forgiving son leaving
their homes and flying across the globe to be by his side,
he would have died alone.
His last spoken words, I am told, was: ''I leave nothing
for my children.''
''Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make
makes you.''
Some say that on an average, we make around 35.000
choices every day.
With every choice we make there is an outcome.(Consequence)
(Even making a choice to not make a choice, is a choice
with an outcome.)
How do we make choices?
Often deliberately and consciously, but also
by gut-feeling, instinct, habit/subconsciously.
We make choices by gathering information, considering
consequences/outcomes, considering options, etc. etc.
What we often are unaware of when we make choices
is that past experiences, different kinds of biases,
mindset and emotional state very much affect
the choices we make.
There is research that reveals that emotions constitute
potent, pervasive, predictable, sometimes harmful
and sometimes beneficial ''drivers'' in our decision making.
Have you ever woken up in the morning and asked yourself:
-Oh, man, why did I do that? Bad choice #&!
It felt right at the time? Seemed fun. I wasn't thinking.
I was being spontaneous. I knew I shouldn't have
but I did it anyway. And so on.
''Our lives are the result of our choices.
If we don't like our lives,
we need to make different choices.''
(Kuzhandwizdom)
''Eventually our little choices are going to become
habits that affect the bigger decisions
we make in life.''
(Jim George)
Before the Man(in the above story) died, he had
come back here to Australia, contacted his sister
and demanded that she would nurse him.
Having tended to his demands many times before,
and knowing how difficult he was, the sister said no this time.
He then flew back to where he had come from(some Asian
island I think) and checked himself into a private
hospital that cost $2.000 a day. By this stage he was so
poorly that the hospital phoned the sister and told her to
come. His son, a tenderhearted, generous and compassionate
man, ignored and belittled by his father most of his life,
joins the man's sister and then spends day and night
at his father's bedside.
With no hope of recovery, all machines are removed
and with his last breath of life the father tells his son:
''I leave nothing for my children.''
Don't wait another day to make those choices
you know you should make.
Life only happens now.
about the image: ''The last Breath''
Charcoal on paper, some editing in Elements
