Life Is Full Of Choices & Compromises

There is a contradiction here. If life is full of choices, where is the question of compromises? Remember, even a compromise is a choice. Let's evaluate this. How is Life Full of Choices? When we eat too much, we make a choice to be overweight. When we drink too much, we make a choice to have a headache the next day. If you drink and drive, you make a choice to risk being killed or killing someone in an accident. When we ill treat people, we make a choice to be ill treated in return. When we don't care about other people, we make a choice not to be cared for by other people. Choices have consequences. We are free to make our choice but after we have chosen, the choice controls us. We have equal opportunity to be unequal. The choice is ours. Life can be compared to a pottery maker who shapes clay in any form he wants. Similarly, we can mold our lives into any shape we want. How is Life Full of Compromises? Life is not just party and pleasure; it is also pain and despair. Unthinkable things happen. Sometimes everything turns upside down. Bad things happen to good people. Some things are beyond control, such as physical disability and birth defects. We cannot choose our parents or the circumstances of our birth. So if the ball bounced that way, sorry. But what do we do from here; cry or take the ball and run? That is a choice we have to make. On a clear day, there are hundreds of boats sailing in all different directions in a lake. How come? Even though the wind is blowing in one direction, the sailboats are going in different directions. What is the difference? It depends on the way the sail is set, and that is determined by the sailor. The same is true of our lives. We can't choose the direction of the wind, but we can choose how we set the sail. We can choose our attitude even though we cannot always choose our circumstances. The choice is either to act like a victor or a victim. It is not our position but our disposition that determines our destiny. It takes both rain and sunshine to create a rainbow. Our lives are no different. There is happiness and sorrow. There is the good and the bad ; dark and bright spots. If we can handle adversity, it only strengthens us. We cannot control all the events that happen in our lives, but we can control how we deal with them.

•  Richard Blechnyden wanted to promote Indian tea at the St. Louis World fair in 1904. It was very hot and no one wanted to sample his tea. Blechnyden saw that all the other iced drinks were doing flourishing business. It dawned on him to make his tea into an iced drink, mix in sugar and sell it. He did and people loved it. That was the introduction of iced tea to the world.

 When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, we can react responsibly or resentfully. Human beings are not like an action which has no choice. An action cannot decide whether to become a giant tree or to become food for the squirrels. Human beings have choices. If nature gives us a lemon, we have a choice: either cry or make lemonade.