This I Believe

I think that we are all a product of our choices. At this exact moment, each person is the sum of all of his/her previous choices in life. Forget about both nurture and nature for a moment, and you realize that everybody is just the physical embodiment of their own histories.

Consequently, each previous choice affects the availability of subsequent choices. For example, if I were backpacking through Europe, at any given moment I could choose to go left, right, straight, or back. But I could not choose to go to Australia with the very next step. It'll take multiple steps to get to Australia from Europe. The same goes for life choices. If I decide to talk to a person, I can choose the topic of conversation, and I can choose not to talk to that person anymore, but I can't choose to go back to the time when I hadn't talked to that person.

I believe that in this way, we are all confined to a certain fate. I don't mean a fate that's dictated by a greater being but rather one that's forced upon us because of the limitations resulting from our life choices. With each decision, the permutations of the future are altered.

Perhaps "decisions" is not the right word to use because often things that happen to us are not decisions of our own. Our own actions are affected by multiple variables including genes and the actions of others which also end up limiting the way our own life can play out. Which means we don't exactly have the ability to control the way our life shapes out. Environmental factors make up a large percentage of our future actions. Though at the same time, we can definitely take some initiative to influence how those environmental factors can impact our lives. That's why the same single event can happen to two different people with two very different outcomes.

I have no regrets in the actions that have taken me to where I am right now. I was lucky a lot of factors that I can't control actually worked in my favor, such as growing up with a supportive family in a great neighborhood. I was lucky that my genes make me very receptive to facing challenges, which I think has made me more resourceful and open to new ideas. And I tend to live life without any regrets because I'm pretty happy with my current situation in life, which means everything I've done in the past has somehow worked itself out to bring me to this exact moment in life.

~Post inspired by NPR's This I Believe~