Choices

Everything that happens in life is a result of a choice.

I'm not about to get into the idea of free will. That conversation gets very intense and confusing. And it involves whether or not we actually have the ability to make a choice or if things are predetermined for us.

Lets just start with the idea that a choice has an outcome.

Whenever you have to make a choice, you also have to consider the possible result of that choice. And then you decide what to do.

Sometimes the things going on in your life are a result of choices that you made a long time ago. Sometimes they are a result of choices that other people have made. Sometimes you don't know who made which choice. But they are a result. Sometimes one choice affects your entire life.

It always seems easier to make the correct choices if you have some goal in mind. A goal provides guidance. Guidance is what tells you what to do in the first place. So working to a goal helps you to make the correct choices on a day to day basis.

I want my children to have a certain set of values as adults. That goal alone has a very real impact on the way that I choose to go about my life now. Whether or not they understand the choices that I make, I hope that my example will provide guidance to them as they grow.

I have a set of goals for my family's financial future. So my wife and I make spending choices based on that goal.

I know that a lot of who I am has to do with a similar set of choices that were made by my own role models in my life to date.

What none of us can know however, or even pretend to understand, are the choices that other people have made in their lives. We may be able to get a sort of a snapshot every so often of what other people are about. But we will never have available to us a way to completely understand what makes others make the choices that they do. We don't have the ability to look into their mind and see what cog pushes which lever in the decision making process.

This is why there are so many things that happen in the world that we just don't understand.

An engine is a great example of this. I recently had to replace one in one of my cars. As I was doing the work, one of the things that I was very much anticipating was the task of taking apart the old engine. I wanted to know what had gone wrong.

Whether you speak gearhead or not, I'll do my best to give this information in simple terms.

When i took the oilpan off, I found a colossal amount of debris. Let me qualify the word colossal by saying that I have taken apart quite a few engines to see the carnage. I can't take one out and not take it apart. I have to know what happened.
I have never seen one quite this torn up. never. I had parts of the engine literally ripped apart. And some of those parts I had never seen broken in any engine before.

So I started digging. As i worked through disassembly, I found that the outlet of the water pump had failed. Knowledge of engines indicates to me that soon after the engine must have stopped cooling properly. After it stopped cooling, logic says that it likely got very very hot. The heat naturally created excess expansion of some of the bearing surfaces in the motor, which ruined them. Those ruined surfaces must have then begun to generate friction on the parts they are designed to lubricate and protect. The friction generates resistance in the engine, in this case stressing the connecting rods, which are the parts that make a piston cycle during combustion. Given enough friction, the connecting rods on two cylinders broke. The parts of the rods went flying around the inside of the engine, causing more damage, and breaking more parts. One of the broken parts lodged in the pickup for the oil pump, stopping it from doing its job. without oil, then friction and heat grew, until finally the engine just couldn't take it anymore and stopped running.

I believe that people are just like engines. Everything about us is due to cause and effect. Choices. The only difference is that nobody can look at a person and do much more than speculate what series of events and choices have been made to lead up to the current situation. We only get a snap shot. Unlike my understanding of how an engine works, and my ability to look at the snapshot of the broken engine; there is nobody on the planet who really has enough understanding of a person to actually take a snapshot of now and sort through all of the steps.

Some of us are better or more well trained than others at it. We have learned all of the different theories of the operation of the human mind. We can put some of them into practice, and achieve some results some of the time. Unfortunately, we are not able to look into somebody's mind in a manner that allows us to fully understand all of the choices and results that have taken place in that persons life.

Imagine the problems we could solve if that were possible. Imagine the things that we'd see that nobody realllly wants to know about.

I spoke in an earlier post about evidence. All of our studies of this nature directly relate to evidence. My ability to retrace the final minute or so of the life of the engine has mostly to do with my ability to interpret the evidence.

With a person however, the evidence never tells the whole story. Did you know that a cat will instinctively try to hide an illness until it just isn't able to do so anymore? Usually a cat goes from looking very healthy to looking deathly ill seemingly overnight. People will similarly try to "save face" and hide the evidence. How many times have you heard the phrase "i never would have thought" when discussing something that a person has done. People, like cats, never want anybody to know what outcome those determining choices have created.

Oddly, we don't even seem to want to know about it. "How are you doing" is a rhetorical greeting that we use when getting coffee in the morning, like saying hello or something similar. Only in a rare situation does somebody ask the question and actually want you to tell them how you are doing.

We seem afraid of what might be going on in there. Or we are so wrapped up in our own interests that we don't want to spend the time to find out about someone else. But mostly, we are just afraid that they might answer the question with much more than the word "fine." Ever had an elderly person explain their health problems to you in detail? You didn't really want to know.

The biggest problem with choices is that they can be made without guidance.

And yes. This is where God comes into the conversation. I own a whole great big book that gives me a great deal of guidance about what choices i should and should not make in my life. It covers every possible example if you look for it. As a matter of fact, I'll give you a dare tonight, (like always i know) The next problem that you face that matters, go get your bible. Open it to any random page. close your eyes and put your finger anywhere. You will find some sort of guidance if you try to understand what the words are telling you. I guarantee it.

I'm not saying that you should play bible roulette with your life. I'm just saying that in those times that you feel a need for guidance, there is just such a sort of help available to you.

Consider again the engine. If that little o-ring on the water pump had not failed in the first place, the engine might still be running. What I guess the point tonight comes down to is that every time you make a choice, make certain that you have considered where that choice may lead not only you, but where it may lead those who are affected by it. Sometimes you can have a profound influence on somebody's life and not even know it.