"One could say,
it is what it is,
but it isn't really.
It is what we say it is."
-- Albert K. Strong
One of my predominate themes in these Daily Inspirations is choice. We live by choice. I like how Rhonda Byrne states this concept without using the word choice: "Life isn't happening to you; life is responding to you." She goes on to add, "Life is your call! Every area of your life is your call. You are the creator of your life. You are the writer of your life story. You are the director of your life movie. You decide what your life will be--by what you give out."
Last night I watched a movie I've been waiting to get by Michael Moore, titled, Where To Invade Next. He has become an artist at mixing humor and social commentary, and this movie is part farce and part the way it is. If you haven't seen it, he travels to many other countries to claim rights to their good ideas, excellent choices, and magnificent manifestations. What he found was that virtually all of those ideals began right here.
He touched on free college education rather than burdening our youth with mountains of educational debt, about equal rights and opportunities for women, and women in power positions and how that has changed many places for the better, how the 'rights' of the working class is handled in some other countries, and more.
What this movie came down to was choices. We choose as individuals, and we choose as groups of individuals, even as so-called governments, which are simply groups of individuals. One choice he pointed out is what the U.S. spends as a percentage of the entire federal budget on defense. I just looked up the latest and it is 54%. That is an interesting number. Can you imagine spending 54% of your income on insurance and security? It's an obscene amount, especially relative to other countries; however, I'm not looking for a debate on social and governmental issues. I'm merely pointing out that as a government, which is simply a group of individuals, we have chosen to spend our collective monies in certain ways. We are making choices.
To add to this just a bit, we could easily--very easily, in fact, have free college education for everyone in our country, along with free medical care, which is supplied in many other countries, along with many of the ideals that Michael Moore highlighted in his movie. Other countries have chosen to do so, and we have chosen not to.
Is that good or bad? It is neither. It is simply choices. In the same way, we make choices on an individual level, in all of our living. Like Rhonda said, "life isn't happening to you; life is responding to you." It is the choices, that comes from our thinking, and feeling that creates the choices. We choose everything. We choose how to think, what to think, how to feel about what we think and resultant decisions, as decisions are simply choices of action. Of course indecision is also a choice.
A couple of days ago, I was thinking that I could have owned a Corvette had I wanted to. I sold many of them, and sometimes fantasized about owning one, but never actually bought one. It wasn't because they were expensive, although they were higher in price than the cars and trucks I did buy. It was because I never made the decision. I never chose to. I only considered it, thought about it, had certain feelings relating to that idea. I could have owned a Ferrari too. Heck, I bought quite a number of new cars in my life, but never chose the Corvette or the Ferrari. I have no regrets about it either. I could have if I really wanted to by choosing; instead, I chose not to.
So we decide where to spend our money, whether to save money or not, to use credit or not, what kind of life we choose to live, including the one we have because we decided not to be too choosy.
And, here's the best part: we can choose differently any time we want to. We can choose anything we want, and we can probably have pretty much anything that we want, if we really want it. So often we may only be like me and the Corvette, where I thought about it, fantasizing what it would be like, enjoying the idea, and then not buying it because I decided something else. It's all good. All our choices lead us to the next.
Choose. Choose Again. Choose At Will. It Is Our Choosing That Creates The Path We Walk, Not The Path That Creates The Walk.
Spread Some Joy Today--by choosing joy on purpose.
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