Choices

I was thinking a little bit today about the choices I’ve made through my life. The first major choice I can think of was to follow Christ, and that has been the most influential of them all. If I had not made this choice, I would not be the man I am today. I don’t even want to think of my life without Christ as my foundation, because sadly, to be honest, I probably wouldn’t still be alive. But I am, and I owe everything to Him. There is nothing I regret from that choice.

There are other choices I’ve made that I’m less confident in.  Foremost in my mind is the choice to pursue a degree and presumably a career in physics/engineering.  I don’t particularly like math or science, it’s just what I was good at.  I was taught to work hard in school and make the right choices to get a successful job and support your future family, which was my motivation for choosing this career path.  It’s secure, it pays pretty well, and it’s something I’m fairly competent at.  I don’t worry much about being able to provide for my family (assuming, of course, I ever get one.)  So why the uncertainty?  What makes me worry about choosing this career is that it isn’t something I love to do.  It was the best decision I could make in regards to my future, but it isn’t my passion.  I made the choice to pursue this career out of necessity and out of the underlying responsibility I have to my future family.  Had I made a more selfish decision with my career choice, I probably would have ended up doing something else entirely.  Most likely, something music-related.  Performance or recording related or something.  That’s where my passion lies.  In music.  So maybe I should have thought a little more about myself and my desires before choosing a career.  Maybe not.  In either case, it’s far too late now.  One thing I have had to learn to do is live with decisions.  I committed to this career in 8th grade when signing up for classes in high school, when I decided to do the “squeeze course” and take two years of math in one.  That put the wheels in motion to do something math related, and the rest is history.  I wonder what things would have been like if I hadn’t made that choice.  It would be foolish and irresponsible to change my career choice now, just one year from completion of my degree, so I have to buck up and live with it.  I can do that and I’ll have to do that.  The good thing about music is it’s something I can do as a hobby on the side, and I have a much better chance supporting my family with an engineering job than I do with something in music.  It still makes me wonder…

I think about the choices I’ve made with my relationships, or lack thereof.  I wonder what my life might look like if I were a little more proactive with the girls I’ve liked.  If I had the moxie to go up to the girl I like the next time I see her and tell her how I feel, what would happen.  I have a good idea, but without doing it, I’ll never know, and I’ve seemingly made the choice not to make the choice, out of fear of rejection.  I wonder if I’d be this lonely and hopeless when it comes to relationships if I had simply manned up.  Probably.  But we’ll never know.

I wonder if it’s a pride issue that won’t let me admit I made a mistake with a choice in life.  I feel like if I make a choice, I will stick it through to the end whether good or bad.  I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing.  Maybe I should realize when I’ve made a bad decision and get out of it.  Of course, I’m talking about grander choices in life, not the little ones.  If I’m in a bad situation I know when to get out of it.  But if it’s something that takes a great deal of time to develop, i.e. a career path, I don’t have the foresight.  In either case, I think commitment to decisions is something this world lacks.  There’s a song by the band The Felix Culpa entitled “Commitment”, and it addresses this issue.  A small excerpt of the lyrics goes like this:

Where to begin?
No one ever tells you that you lose your best friend
When you make her your wife
So let’s talk about commitment
And compromised positions
Let’s talk about learning to live with decisions
We live in a world
Where no one wants to work
So we scream at each other
Just to be heard
And the louder it gets
The more we forget that
Love’s not a choice
But we choose when to use it…

For some reason those words always strike me and encourage me to show some integrity and see things through, even if its to the bitter end.  Well, time will tell how my choices shape me.  There’s a very memorable quote from the game Bioshock, which I’ve been enjoying lately, and I think it’s very true:

We all make choices in life, but in the end, our choices make us.

 

So we’ll have to see…