It's All About Choices

Often enough we hear people exclaimed "What can I do? I have no choice!". Sometimes I wonder if it was just a lame excuse or were they telling the truth. No choice? Hmmm...

When we were in school, we were never given the chance to think for ourselves, except in our studies of course. It's always "Do as I say!" from FAMA (Father & Mama). Some of the fortunate few, yes...they were taught to think on their own since they were young. But for most of us, all at the liberty of the parents even when we came into Form 5....Science or Literature? Only when we were going into higher education were we 'asked' to think what we wanted to become. Duuuhh... And still, most of us would "Ikut aje lah (Whatever....just follow)". The same thing happened to me when I was filling out the form for Higher Institutions. How? Just choose whatever courses that suited with my SPM results lah.

As life goes on and things happened..the goods and the bads...have you ever wondered how they could have happened? Fated? Yeah...let me go to that shortly. Let's just say that you are idling at the moment (I mean, now)...not doing anything. What would you do? You'd start thinking "What should I do?" or "Feel like hungry" or "I'm bored". Then you'd start to think whether you wanna watch TV, DVD, read a book, grab a biscuit / a sandwich, go makan sate Kajang, make some tea/coffee/milo/whatever; of just close your eyes and go to sleep. Finally you'd do any one of those. What's that, actually? That's the choice that you made at that moment in time.

And life is like that...it's all about making choices.

There's this story about a restaurant owner who was badly shot by a man who broke into his restaurant through the kitchen door. When he was rolled into the OT (Operation Theatre), doctors and nurses thought he wasn't going to make it. Voila! A few days later he was still alive and recuperating; and all of them thought it was a miracle. How did he do it? Because the moment he was shot and lying there on his kitchen floor in a pool of his own blood, he thought to himself "I have two choices...whether I want to stay alive...or I'm going to die". And he chose to live. So when the doctors started to operate on him, he whispered "Doc, operate on me like I'm going to live, don't operate on me like I'm going to die". So the team did their best to save his life. Fated?

Here's another story of a young girl who was broken hearted. Her long-time sweetheart ditched her for another girl and she was devastated. Her whole life was all about him. So when he left her, she felt empty and that she couldn't live without him. So one night, she went to a bridge and jumped off into the river. Two days later they found her body downstream. Fated?

Last night, I read "Dare to Fail" by Billi Lim, the Failure Master. At the beginning of the book, there's a story about a multi-millionaire in Thailand who went bankrupt. He ended up selling sandwiches and was still making a living. Could he have done any better...or any worse? Obviously he chose the former. Fated?

Would you know...what's your fate? What you were destined to become in years to come? Simply, would you know what you'd be doing in the next hour? Or would you be thinking or acting now, based on the choices that you can make? You could either lie down to sleep...or you could get up and grab a book to read or thousand other things other than sleep. In normal circumstances, these are easy matters, you'd say. But even when you're caught in difficult situations, don't you think that you could still make a choice?

You see, God has created life in partners and opposites...there's man and woman, left and right, day and night, high and low, good and evil, heaven and hell..etc. Whatever we want to be, wherever we want to go, however we want to do things...it's all up to us. It's all about making a choice now.

If you make a choice and so happened the result was good, you'd feel happy that you've made 'the right choice'. Yes? And if so happened the result wasn't good, you feel bad...sometimes regretting it. Think again...you still have a choice. You could give up OR you could learn from your mistakes and re-invent or re-strategise OR you could drop the whole thing and start another one. Make a choice, because that is your responsibility to do so. Whatever happen next is not yours to be concerned.

"No misfortune can happen on earth or in your souls but is recorded in a decree before We bring it into existence: that is truly easy for God. In order that ye may not despair over matters that pass you by, or exult over favours bestowed over you. For God loveth not any vainglorious boaster" - Al Hadid : 22-23.