Choices

Well I have to admit that we do have a lot of choices in anything and everything. We can choose between the options we have for a T.V, or a refrigerator. We can choose whether we want to do the laundry or not. We can choose to get married or stay single. We can choose to work or stay unemployed. Well you know what I mean.

Even if you are being held hostage, with a gun being waved right in front of your face, you still have a choice. How, you ask? Well you do have the choice to disobey and get killed or to cooperate and not get shot at, or still get shot at.

Hey! I never mentioned that the choices would be good – just that there is still a choice of action. But on a more serious note, be it with advanced technology and growth or the basic necessities for living like clothes food, shelter and water, or even down to the morals and values instilled in us, we have a variety of choices.

We also have the choice to make the better choice. Does that make any sense to you? It should, but just in case, let me explain. In all the choices given to us, one or some of the choices are good for us(or just good generally) while the others are bad. Now we have the choice to make the choice that will be better for us, or we can also make the choice of choosing the choice that is bad for us.

For instance, let us take a cheating husband. Now he has a loyal wife back at home and a woman, say maybe a newly acquired friend. Both women are interested in him and both willing to do anything for him. Now the man had two options in front of him – one being that he could ignore his woman friend’s interest in him as other than a friend and return to his loyal wife, and the second being that he could ignore his loyal wife back at home and engage the time of his new woman friend. Well he chose the latter and as we all know from the various accounts we have all heard about cheating husbands, he chose a choice that was bad for him. What was the reason for it? Maybe it was temptation, maybe he wasn’t satisfied with his wife, maybe he does not have any willpower, maybe t the time the choice seemed better to him and maybe he’s not man enough to stand up to his vows. It could be anything. But he had his choices and he made his decision so he will have to live with his consequences.

That brings us to the next step of making a choice – the consequences. Every choice that one makes always has a reaction. Now that reaction can be positive or negative depending on your choice and the situation in which that choice was made. Sometimes, the reaction can be both, but with different life spans.

Let us go back to the cheating husband. Now in my opinion, he would have gotten a positive and a negative response to his choice. A positive reaction in the sense that he would get nicely laid by his new woman friend and yet have a nice loyal wife to back home to. A negative response when his wife ultimately find out about his extra-marital affairs. Also a negative reaction, if he decides to dump this new woman friend in order to salvage his marriage.

Unfortunately in our country, the people can’t seem to figure out what their choices are. They are too narrow-minded to see that there are a whole lot of choices to choose from ad the judicial program does not enforce the consequences on those with the bad choices. Hence we face a lot of problems in the development of the country such as corruption, blackmail and what not. If a politician’s kid chooses to kill somebody just because they are annoyed with the person, then they do so and get away with it. Why? Because their father is a politician, who can pay through his nose in order to see that his kid does not face any consequences. This way parents are also to blame. They spoil their kids and by trying to ‘protect’ them, they wind up indirectly teaching them that the kids can do whatever they feel like doing and not worry about any after effect, as “mommy and daddy will deal with it”. The younger generation is not told that certain rules are to be maintained and certain people to be given their due respect regardless of their own status in society. How on earth are we to move forward in life, when we cannot instill any values in the generation after us? How on earth are our lives going to improve, when the basic cycle of karma is being ignored?