Nevada Daily Mail

Life is choices

Posted Wednesday, March 19, 2008, at 11:52 AM
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Lately in my life I have found that I have had to make a lot of hard decisions. To me at least, these seem like the huge kind. You know, the kind that determine what you're going to do for the rest of your life. Needless to say I've been feeling pressure to make the right choices since no one wants to see me flipping hamburgers for the rest of my life. Some of this pressure is coming from other people, but a good part of it is coming from myself. I am a very type A personality, so I am driving myself crazy with all my over analyzing of my own situation. Just to give you an example of this, I wanted to create a flow chart of my own life for the last six months to find out where all these problems/choices actually came from and then decide the best plan of action. It was also going to be color coded by emotion (seriously). I then thought some more about this and then decided it wasn't the best idea considering how big this flow chart would be and how much free time it would actually waste.

Everyone keeps telling me that I really should just let it go and things will work themselves out. Example: "You're only 19 and you don't have to know what you want. You don't have to do anything, so stop trying." - Caroline Phillips, Date: probably yesterday. Everyone (Mom) is most likely right, but I just can't let it go. I just feel this need to know what I should do, and how I should go about it. The irony is though that by acting that way I have actually made things worse.

So lately I've been going against myself and trying to be more Type B personality. I try not to ask prying questions of myself or others, I try to direct my thoughts to other things, and any time I have the urge to over analyze anything I watch a movie instead. This is working out alright for me, but I still have a little trouble controlling my thoughts. The other day, for example, I was sitting in my Intro to Theater class and my teacher was talking about the difference between comedies and dramas. To give you the short version of it, dramas are driven by choices and comedies are driven more by plot. In my head, without even realizing it, I started to apply my life lately to these two models. Then I started to think to myself "I hope my life is a comedy instead of a drama". I caught myself thinking this and decided I really needed to get out more. Which is exactly what I have been trying to do since. I am trying to enjoy myself more and actually have some fun, because isn't that the whole point about this time in my life? I won't be young forever and I might as well enjoy it while I still have it, right?

Life is choices, you can't change that. You can, however, change the way you go about life. This is my one and only shot at life, so why not go out and actually live it?

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And if you make the right choices, don't you end up with a comedy in the end?

-- Posted by JanetR on Mon, Apr 21, 2008, at 12:04 AM

Elise Phillips' response:

If I say yes, then can I get an A on the next test?

Elise,

You might want to think of life as a test (yeah, no stress there, huh?). It is a good analogy though. You start off with plenty of questions and a chunk of time to answer them all in. If you spend too much time worrying about one question and ignore the others pretty soon you will look up at the clock and find that you have no time left at all. The same is true in life. If you focus on only one aspect of your life and ignore everything else, you will find one day (many years from now) that there is simply no time left on the clock. A mid-life crisis is often the desperate attempt to rush through and get something down on paper for all of life's other questions hoping to beat the buzzer at the last minute.

I agree with those people that tell you that you don't need to have everything figured out already. That doesn't mean that you should ignore all the questions either. You still have plenty of time. Create. Explore. Discover what makes you *WANT* to get out of bed every morning and face the new day. That may be the hardest question on the paper for you right now. The other things will fall into place in due time. (Trust me.) I don't know anyone who wants to wander aimlessly through life, and I don't think anyone wants you to wander aimlessly either. Just don't be afraid to go off the beaten path as you try to find your own way...the one that brings you real joy, the one best suited to who you are.

Some day we will all be asked to lay our pencils down for the last time. It is a frightening prospect that everyone must face. Some people duck their heads into the sand and pretend that it will never happen, and others have become so discouraged by bad choices in the past that they give up on trying to find better answers. Likewise, we can become so afraid of making a wrong choice that we end up making no choices at all. Staring at the blank test paper doesn't earn you any points either. Don't be afraid to take on the hard questions, but give yourself some slack if you don't come up with an answer right away. You still have plenty of time.

--Dr. Ken

-- Posted by laserjock on Mon, Apr 21, 2008, at 1:13 PM

Elise Phillips' response:

Thanks Ken for the encouragement. It's good to know I have a friend like you.