Days of Transformation - We Do Have Choices

One of my frustrations is when I hear people talking about what Life has done to them, and living as victims of the twists and turns of Life, rather than carving out their own journeys and living life to its fullest.

My son, bless his heart, would spend endless minutes explaining to me why he couldn't change things in his life, or why something was "impossible." And of course, my part of the mother/son script was to say, "In the amount of time you have taken to tell me why we can't do something, we could have come up with a dozen way to get the job done."

Knowing my mindset on creating one's life as a work of art, you can see why I am inspired by these words by Joseph Epstein:

We do not choose to be born.

We do not choose our parents.

We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth or the immediate circumstance of our upbringing.

We do not, most of us, choose to die, nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death.

But within all of this choicelessness, we do choose how we can live;

courageously or in cowardice,

honestly or dishonestly,

with purpose or in drift.

We decide what is important and what is trivial in life.

We decide that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do.

But no matter how indifferent the universe might be to our choices and decisions,
these choices are ours to make.

We decide.
We choose.
And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed.