Choices

The world around us is a great and wonderful place. It is full of magic and wonder. It is also full of intrigue and danger. In the face of all this we have the ability to choose for ourselves what we will do. The first choice we make in a day is to wake up and the last is when to go to sleep. In between we make hundreds of choices and in the midst of all these decisions we live our life.

In the great free countries of this world we have the ability to make choices for ourselves to guide our life. Freedom to make our own decisions and think for ourselves is God given. In the Declaration of Independence it says that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The freedom that we have gives us the ability to pursue happiness. The decisions that we make on a day to day basis are for the sole purpose to bring us happiness. By and large we don’t wake up and say I am going to do such and such today so that I will be miserable. We wake up and do things to help make us happy, though in so doing we inadvertently do things that reach to the other end. That is we do things to make us happy but in the end these very things make us miserable.

Case in point: We go to the mall and find that magical pair of shoes or the new electronic gadget that has just been released on the market. These items cost more then we can reasonably spend now, but a wonderful bank has given us the means to our happiness and the pursuit thereof. In the consumer nature of our society we make the decision to consume and pay over time for these blessed luxuries that will bring us happiness. We take the bait and 6 months later are still paying for the shoes that were worn once or for the gadget that we never really learned to use. The credit card bills make it even harder to achieve what you want. What you want is happiness, and what you wanted was happiness. A decision was made to pursue happiness, which is your God given right, but the decision that was made in the name of happiness is now the very reason you are miserable today. A myriad of other examples can be made. These include many of the guilty pleasures in this life including food, drugs, sex, and gambling. These items promise happiness, but often lead to misery.

It is also true that we have obstacles to our own happiness. The very fact that we are alive means that we not only have the freedom to act but that others are free to act upon us. In the end; however, we are the ones who can control our own destiny. We must therefore learn how to control ourselves and by so doing be able to make those choices that will lead to true happiness. Happiness is the goal in life. Let us then take a deeper look into ourselves to find out how we tick. By uncovering why we make the choices that we make we can take control of our lives so that we can achieve what we really want: to be happy.