Choices and Metamorphosis

 

What are choices? Choices are those decisive templates by which we live our lives. They are our daily premeditated actions, or decisive preferences. Of all the outfits packed in the diversity of your wardrobe, a black jean with a blue top was what you thought ideal to wear to a friend’s birthday party. That’s a choice. That’s your choice. You could have chosen another outfit, if you wanted to. 

Choices play cardinal roles in the forms that our lives take, as humans. As a matter of fact, choices are the greatest weapons in our material arsenals. With your choices, you can make your life, and with your choices, you can break your life. 

I was conversing with a mentor some two weeks ago, and he asked me why I had not yet implemented some of the goals I had for life. The question reflexively triggered my defenses. I gave him all the genuine reasons I thought I had in the world, and he told me something. “If you keep looking for excuses, you will always find them, and guess what, you will never move from here to there.” 

“God has given every person everything they need to transform their lives, he added, "it is in them, and it is left to them whatever they choose to do or not do with it”. His words returned me to reality, to the reality of the one thing that all humans everywhere, share equally; time!

 Time and the choices we make with it. We will be deluding ourselves to argue that fingers are equal. Literally and figuratively, this argument clearly holds zero water. People vary not only in privileges, but also in access to resources of all kinds. 

While some have the grace of a silver spoon, some have an iron spoon, some a wooden spoon, and of course, a fair mention must be made of those without the privilege of any spoon at all. 

But here’s the thing – no category is fundamentally better than the other. There may be, if at all there is, a current difference in access to privileges, but life provides a level-playing field for every human, via the machinery of Choices! 

Either choices earn you a place in the stars, or leave your life a canvas for scars; they can only do one, and not both. The guy with a silver spoon only needs to make a considerable number of flawed choices, and his spoon, if not his life, becomes the price he pays for levity. The girl with no spoon can be smart with her choices, and move her life up the rungs of spiritual, socioeconomic, and intellectual ladder. The opposite is, of course, not impossible for all categories. 

Choices are formative forces. Did you know that you do not need a seer to tell you what your future looks like? No, you do not! Just examine the choices you make on a daily basis, and there you go! That’s what your future will look like.

 You see, your present is a culmination of the choices you made in the past, in the same pattern that your future will be the consequence of the choices you are now making in the present. Life, then, is functionally not spontaneous. Life is intentional, and answers to intentional people; to people who own their choices, to people who understand the compound interest that comes with healthy choices made over time. 

Metamorphosis is a process of development. And your choices can either advantage the process or disadvantage it. Choices are in a complex intercourse with metamorphosis. True evolution leaves trends, and patterns. Every development or underdevelopment is traceable to the forces of choice that preceded it. 

Greatness, like misery, does not just land on people. Even when inherited, the sustenance is contingent on the choices of the custodian. You can let it continue, and you can say here is where it stops. Your choices call the shots. Greatness is the cumulative result of great choices made, over time. Misery is the cumulative result of miserable choices made, over time. 

Your metamorphosis is dependent on your choices. The choices you have made today, can you say they, by any chance, mirrored the reality you want for your future self? The interesting thing is that, you do not have to answer, because time will eventually answer for you! 

If choices are secrets, time is that garrulous friend who eventually cannot help revealing them. Anybody can tell anybody that they are this and that, that they are doing this and that, but time is a loquacious ticking bomb, waiting to explode. It will explode, and the world will see the results of your choices, your metamorphosis. 

If you want to become anything, your choices must follow the line of your desire. You want to be a word-class leader in the future, and your anger is volcanic eruption? No, that’s not the way. You need to start getting a handle on your emotions, learn to separate your feelings from the facts, and choose reason over impulse. Every time someone wrongs you, make a choice to swallow your impulses, and take your time to assess the situation for what it is.

Your choices should not own you, you should own them. And you can! God has given every person the ability to make choices of their own. He wouldn’t even shove salvation down your throat. He made the provision, but still leaves that power to decide in your hands. It tells us how much we can make of our existence with our own hands. 

Everyone has everything they need to transform their lives, they are either too comfortable to find it, or too lazy to hone it. Both of which are functions of choices. If you want to fly, the sky is what you should choose, and not the ground. 

The Feranmi Oyedele!