Choices

Life is a series of choices. Each affecting the next. One decision with branches too diverse and numerous to imagine. Every "fork in the road" leading to another choice. There is no way to be certain where you would be right now if you had made a different option in any of hundreds of seemingly inconsequential choices in your life. Everything you do affects everything that follows. Alternatively, everything might be predetermined, destiny driven, scripted, nothing left to chance. How boring that makes things.

It seems much more exciting to pull up to the stop light, just as it switches from green to yellow, and think should I hurry? Should I speed through? If I do, I might get a ticket, my insurance rates will go up, It will be more difficult to buy groceries, our kids will go hungry, eventually we will have to sneak over to the Metro Park and hunt turkey, squirrel and rabbit, maybe take a few picnic baskets. But, if I don't get pulled over then I can get home before my wife, and I will have the power to decide what we have for dinner.

But, if everything is predetermined, mapped out ahead of time by fate, or God, or the programming skills of some long dead alien race then dinner has already been decided, taco Tuesday is not just a saying but a law. That isn't much fun. Who wants to live like that?

Existence is much more tolerable if you can view every decision as a dangerous gamble. Should I cut the blue wire, or the green wire? A full throttle thrill ride, every menu option a potential descent into the abyss. Or the one move that will vault you into greatness, fame, fortune and anything you want for dinner. The unbridled thrill of eating your dessert first.

That, my friends, is the way life should be lived. Fast and loose, risky, foolish and fun. Coffee or tea, because it could make all the difference in the world.