The Connection of Selection

I’m a believer that we always have choices. I don’t have to get up in the morning, I don’t have to go to work or pay my bills, and I could tell the family to fuck off over Thanksgiving dinner. You get the drift. We might not necessarily like the possible outcomes of the choices we have to make; never the less, we still have choices.

Some of this is a probably a product of my middle class upbringing and the Susie Sunshine attitude I’ve adopted. I haven’t had to make choices like those facing chronic poverty or racism have made. But I also have a feeling that a lot people who have lived those experiences might share my view.

Life can beat us down in so many ways—we’ve all been victims at some point. But what separates those of us who choose to polish off the attitude, be resourceful, and not get stuck in the mire from those who wallow in it?

It’s as if some have no resiliency skills whatsoever and some live for the chaos. And they just keep choosing it. The world’s favorite psychology 101 lesson: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I wonder if some people really like being unhealthy, or is it that they just don’t know how to be healthy?

Life hasn’t been great every day of my life, but a lot of the not so great times were due to poor choices I made and life didn’t start to get better until I learned to own my shit and do it a different way. Man, that’s hard stuff sometimes, and being as bull-headed as I am, I’ve had to learn it on my own. I’m one of those who hears, “Hot stove!” and I want to touch it to see how hot is hot, I mean hot is different to everyone, right?

But I digress. Sometimes we make our own shithole and sometimes it’s handed to us. We get to choose how we deal with it. Choice for the bitches, on the other hand, runs on instinct, which isn’t a bad lesson for us humans. They trust their instincts, a skill of which many of us have been deprogrammed.