Living past the bee sting, holding on for honey.

To making firm decisions.

The first thing that came to mind while I sat down to write this is: You're two peas in a pod. I was thinking about the effects of my decisions. That was yesterday, while I looked down from the top of a storey where I stood, taking in and watching what surrounds the beautiful view from this height. I noticed the trees swaying to their own rhythm. Below, I saw cars packed below like a string of army ants marching towards a destination. I saw people, some walking and others chasing their purpose. Did God think about a time like this and call it good?

To think what shapes this moment is the effect of every decision made since the creation story is astonishing. Light is light, and darkness is still darkness. Nothing binds us to this moment more than our decisions. I take life one step at a time and ascend slowly while paying attention. I came to this world by a decision made by my parents. I came crying. Over time, my limbs got strong, and I graduated from crawling to walking and finally to running. During all these times, I made no decisions on my own; I ate whatever I was offered at home, slept at a bedtime pronounced by my father, went out to play by their free will and not mine, and went to school by force, even on days I didn’t want to or perhaps didn’t understand why school was needed.

To be honest, school sounded like punishment those days, especially realizing what lay in wait for you in class - a homework you forgot to work on or anything you might do to warrant some lashes from your teacher. It really sounded like punishment. But I went through it all, by force or not. I do not know when I came to love school, but I did, and I found myself curiously hungry for knowledge to understand whatever my environment was made of. So far as I remember, those were days I made conscious decisions to help ease my living in this world. I stayed up late studying for a test because I wouldn’t want to fail. Washed, ironed, and prepared for school ahead of the weekdays because I knew then that my appearance spoke volumes about how others would address me. Even with all the conscious effort to do right by making the right decisions, things went wrong sometimes.

Paul Coelho remarked in his book, The Alchemist, that we pay a price for every decision made for us by someone else and further mentioned that when someone makes a decision, they are really diving into a strong current that will carry them to places they had never dreamed of when they first made the decision. In reality, I think we pay prices for decisions made by ourselves and ones made for us by others. The effect for which are the prices we pay, and one cannot pick the kind of effect their decisions should have on them, but one must yearn for the goodwill of every decision made and take responsibility for however they turn out.

This world cannot do without goodwill, hope, and positivity; without these, every moment becomes an arching experience. To not know what comes next is a mystery, but to know what seed to plant today gives a fair idea of what one might reap at the end of time. I know the risk of not making decisions at all; it’s far more dangerous than even those made on our behalf, and maybe our reluctance to contribute to our living by making fair decisions is because of our fear of change.

We like to be bound by currents that do not want to drown us, by the winds that slap us gently on our cheeks, and the rain that does not ready the dust off our skin. But know that change is needed, and even in our reluctance to make decisions and staying bound to whatever a present case might be or doing nothing, we’re making decisions too. I call that “idle decision-making”, and their effect is what makes us pale in this ever-evolving, colourful, and living world.

Friend, what decisions did you make yesterday? Do you know the alternative of what your present state might be if you had not made those decisions?

Do not stay bound to calm currents; evolve, make a move - it’s that simple. You’re just decisions away from whatever effect you want to have on your life now.