Choices, Decisions, and Your Life Today
The present is where you have any and all control.
The world has gone from a place of some uncertainty to an extreme amount of uncertainty. Even if you don’t live in the United States, the election of Trump to the Presidency is disquieting at best, and horrifying at worst.
Trump and his enablers are a force of reactionaryism, chaos, and uncertainty. Many threats to the long-established government and social structure are cause for a lot of speculation. What will happen? Who will have their lives impacted? What kind of world is this going to forge for future generations?
All valid and necessary questions. So, here’s the single biggest problem they present. What can you and I do about this? For the most part, the answer is that you and I can do jack and shit.
Did you vote? That was the main thing you could do. Now what? You can find and/or organize protests, hunker down, prepare for the worst, and generally fear what might happen next. This is all utterly valid and nothing to be ashamed of. However, it doesn’t address your life here and now.
Today, as you read these words, all you can do is make choices and decisions for you and your life. Who are you? What are you doing? Where are you going? Why are you doing what you are or aren’t doing? All these lead to choices and decisions which you alone can control.
But what about the big picture and the world and its problems and issues? The truth is that you can do very little for this. What’s more, everything that you can do will potentially feel selfish.
What can you do about it?
Whether or not the awful things the incoming administration has in mind will impact you remains to be seen. You can only prepare so much for that much uncertainty. That might seem horrid – and it probably is – but it’s the truth. What can you do about it? Nothing.
What can you do about it? Vote in every election. Run for office. Support a candidate for office. Organize and/or attend protests, rallies, and the like. Donate money to organizations that can and will fight injustice. Call/email/mail congresspeople and demand accountability and justice. Be an ally for everyone marginalized and most likely to suffer at the hands of Trump and his enablers.
That is more or less the complete list of what you can do about this situation. A large part of the limitations here are based on you being unable to predict the future; think, feel, act, intend for others; control anyone other than yourself; and know all the many uncertain unknowns.
What can you do about it? Only the above. When it comes to the outside world, you are limited because you are not them and they are not you. All the elements of change that come of this are uncertain and unknown. Focusing on that will drive you mad because until shit happens, speculation and the fear of suffering are all any of us have.
Hence, the main thing you can do about this is to live your life by making choices and decisions here and now. Today. Be in the moment, work with what you have, and choose and decide where, how, what, who, and why you are.
It’s all about choices, decisions, and your life today
Two important facts for your consideration:
- The past has come and gone. It cannot be changed, altered, redone, or undone. For example, we can’t go back and change the results of the election.
- The future is unwritten. Possibilities are endless but there is no telling how it will go down. None at all. All there is regarding the future is potential and possibility.
That written, the fact of the matter is that only the present, today, here and now, can you do jack or shit about your life. How? By making choices and decisions.
You make choices and decisions all the time. They are constant, frequent, and regular. The vast majority are automated and relatively small. When you get out of bed, how you brush your teeth, what hand you use to zip up your pants, and the like are choices and decisions that are mostly done on autopilot.
This is a good thing, because can you imagine how inundated you’d feel if you had to make those types of choices and decisions fully consciously? On top of larger ones? It’s a lot.
All your automated actions can be altered via active, conscious choices and decisions made at this moment. Right here and now you can choose and decide to reprogram any and all of your automated choices and decisions.
However, you can only work with this today, here and now, in the present. While the choices and decisions made now might be influenced by the past or with a future goal attached, they are still of this moment. Via this active conscious awareness – yes, mindfulness – you can exert more or less all the control you have in and for your life.
This tends to raise a question.
Choices, decisions, and selfishness
Making choices and decisions for your life IS NOT SELFISH.
Genuine selfishness is an action taken with full malice of forethought regarding all hurt and harm that will come of said action. In other words, you don’t give a shit about who might be hurt or harmed by what you choose and decide to do.
Implied selfishness that comes from mental and emotional hurt from your actions is not selfish. Cutting off a toxic person, ending an unhealthy relationship, or quitting a stressful job might be considered selfish by those peripherally impacted by your action. But it’s not. Hurt and harm resulting from these actions are not malicious so not genuinely selfish.
This is important to consider because, despite the insanity of the world around you and me, all you and I can do is live our lives as best possible. The present is where you have any and all control.
All you can do is make choices and decisions, here and now, for who, what, where, how, and why you are. Today. In the present moment. When you do this, and practice active conscious awareness – i.e. mindfulness – you not only can impact your life by assuming what control you can of it; but also the world at large. This is done by being the best you that you can be, a beacon and example of kindness, compassion, empathy, and the like.
It is not selfish to live your life as best you can in uncertain times. Frankly, it’s the best course of action and most full of potential and possibilities for not just you, but anyone at all that you care about, be it friends, relatives, or strangers in need.
What choices and decisions are you going to make for your life today?
This is the six-hundred-seventy-third (673) exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – applying mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
Thank you for joining me. Feel free to re-post and share this.
The first year of Pathwalking, including expanded ideas, is available here. Check out Amazon for my published fiction and nonfiction works.
Follow me here!
