Choices

Choices. Take pride...

..in your beliefs, but be tolerant of those of others. Our identities are created through the choices we make, and we constantly refine these. A particular choice might be revisited at a later time in life, at which time it might be reaffirmed or revised.

Choices

Too many people in this world are inflexible, intolerant, or both. They are so convinced their ways of thinking, speaking and living are right, they don't consider the ways of others. On a personal level, this is understandable, yet if they were to take a moment they would realize that each and everyone else has made his or her own decisions about their own lives, too.

Our identities are created through the choices we make, and we constantly refine these. A particular choice might be revisited at a later time in life, at which time it might be reaffirmed or revised. Things are re-examined from time-to-time, and certain things eventually become, in our minds, irrefutable.

Three simple examples of my own will help to illustrate this:

The first has to do with liver. When I was young, I loved it. At some point, though (I don't know why or when, which has, I think, made me more curious about it than I might otherwise be), I began to loathe it. For many years after that, then, I would try a bit of liver to see if I liked it again. I didn't, and now I never eat it.

The second is another food: olives. For the longest time, I hated them. Yet, one fine day, I tried them again and liked them, and to this day I am very happy when I see them in front of me.

The third has to do with the novelist Joseph Conrad. I had to read a Conrad novel in tenth grade, and- aside from the fact that any assigned reading is automatically distasteful- I didn't enjoy it. I didn't want to ever read Conrad again. Twice, though, in later life, I tried to read his books. Both times I put them down, and now I never read Conrad.

These are examples where I have found my way (at least, up to this point in my life). I have re-examined my positions on these, and have changed my mind regarding two of them. And who knows?: I may try liver again or pick up a Conrad novel. There are most certainly other things, too, of which I am still unsure, and still others where I have irrationally decided that I like (or do not like) it.

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