Newton's Third Law of Motion tells us that for every action we can expect an equal and opposite reaction. The way I see it, the same principle applies to the endless choices we make, although the inevitable consequences often bring reactions far from being equal in scope.
Just ask the convict who chose to rob a bank, the driver who chose to enter a dangerously fast freeway headed in the wrong direction, or the person who chose to climb a ladder without solidly securing it and is now hospitalized.
Have you ever noticed how often we quickly look around for others to blame for the consequences of our bad decisions while accepting credit for the good ones? In other words, existential human nature on display.
It's now noon. Already today, I've made hundreds of choices that began when I decided to rise at 5:30 a.m. When I examine my morning, it has been filled with one choice after another, just as yours has been. Why, you even chose to read this column (thanks). And some of my seemingly simple choices this morning, depending on the ripple effects, will lead to consequences later in the day and perhaps for much longer.
From such intangible and metaphysical "mind stuff" our lives steadily unfold. For it's within the imperceptible realm of thought that the choices we make and their consequences arise. Amid the hectic day-to-day environment in 2019 we seldom, if ever, pause to reflect on this fundamental truism. Electrical impulses continuously firing in our brains set everything to follow in motion.
I find so many of my daily choices have become little more than habits over the years: What I eat for breakfast, the route I follow to the stores, my mornings with the coffee roundtable, the time of day I lay my head on the pillow. In essence, several of today's choices are flying past on autopilot.
I'm betting most of you sharing the mature years are living pretty much the same way.
Back when I was a 21-year-old graduate of the University of Central Arkansas, my college professor and mentor, the late Gerald Dean Duncan, once told me I was fortunate because I had actively chosen to enter what was clearly to be my life's calling at such an early age, the consequence of which was to allow me to focus almost 50 years on journalism. He was right. I've had no regrets.
Regardless of our decisions, we invariably live what we initially must think about then choose to do. We can choose to have a bad attitude, or assume the role of victim. We can choose how to react to hard times. We usually have a choice between being sad or happy. We choose our friends and, unlike lottery winners, I'll never win if I choose never to play.
That's why it matters a lot that choices we make are based in reality and understanding rather than thoughtlessness and ignorance, both of which are fraught with huge potential for negative consequences. It's a fact that every drug addict or alcoholic chose at some point to begin taking those nightmarish consequences into their bodies.
But dang! Isn't it so much easier and convenient to blame others when our train leaves the track?
I've certainly made more than my share of bad choices over the decades, yet at the time I didn't necessarily see them as mistakes. I may have even believed they were solid decisions. And that's really where this choice thing gets tricky. There are so many variables to the choices we make.
It's just so easy to let emotion, lust, love, greed or any of the other emotional qualities we share become the deciding factors without a second thought. We seldom ask a pertinent question along the lines of: "But wait, what about a year or five or 10 years from now?"
And sadly enough, even well-intentioned choices I make out of ignorance or carelessness frequently have dire consequences, and it's the same for others around us. At this moment I'm thinking of the distraught father who chose to take his infant daughter to day care one morning and forgot she was asleep in her car seat while he instead headed for work as usual, leaving her to die in the superheated car.
Thankfully, I have learned from some of my poor decisions and the harsh lessons they administered, either quickly or over time.
Some poor choices can prove far worse than others when it comes to consequences that all too often prove calamitous. For instance, H. Jackson Brown Jr. advises that the choice we make for our life's mate should always be made with thoughtful care, since 90 percent of one's happiness or misery will stem from that choice in an age where the divorce rate is reported to be 50 percent.
I recently read what other thoughtful people have had to say on the subject. There's plenty of widespread agreement.
Mike C. Adams wrote that whenever we worry about a situation, we are making a conscious choice to do so.
The late General Omar Bradley opined that, in life, just as in battle, it's our decision whether to wait for the circumstances to make up our minds, or to act and, in acting, live.
Self-help guru Tony Robbins believes one's life changes the moment he or she makes new and committed decisions.
Dr. Kathleen Hall of the Stress Institute says,"In every single thing you do, you are choosing a direction. Your life is a product of choices."
The late celebrated aviator Amelia Earhart even had an opinion, saying, "The most difficult thing is the decision to act. The rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure. The process is its own reward."
And author Ryan Holiday believes that while addicts cannot change childhood abuse, the choices they already made or the hurt they caused, they can nonetheless can change their future "through the power they have in the present moment."
What all these words boil down to, valued readers, is that it's never too late to reconsider previous choices and choose adjust our life's sails to head in completely different directions.
Now go out into the world and treat everyone you meet exactly like you want them to treat you.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at mmasterson@arkansasonline.com.
Web only on 12/07/2019