Choices

So one day, when I was driving home (thoroughly enmeshed in traffic as I'm sure you're all accustomed to), I thought about where I'd be if I had chosen to go another way home. Would I be as bogged down as I currently was? Would I still be a half an hour away from home? Would I already be home? And this brief meditation got me thinking even more about the larger concept of choices in general.

Isn't it interesting to think that God, in all of His infinite wisdom, knows the end from the beginning? That He knows exactly what we will choose, and yet He knows what would've happened had we chosen something different. That blows my mind. Seriously. I think about how I was in college, and how a lot of the choices I made were an integral part of who I am today.

My sister had this saying on her myspace page awhile back that discussed the idea that one shouldn't regret the choices they've made because at one point those choices were exactly what was wanted. I don't know if I completely agree with this statement because I think it can be a cop-out; however, I do think that the general idea has merit. For one, I am a firm believer that your choices define who you are. They are reflective of your character, of your values and of who you are deep down. Sure, we all make mistakes and try to learn from them, and sometimes we had to make those mistakes because that was the only way we could've learned that specific lesson. Sometimes, though, I think that "learning the hard way" is completely avoidable. You may disagree. I'll let you ruminate over that.

Greg often says "you can't play the what-if game," and I think he's right. But sometimes I do think about how my life would be if I had made different choices, and I shudder to think about where I might have ended up. Because even though life's never perfect, there is nothing more reassuring to know that you're doing the best you can and that you have tried your hardest to learn from your mistakes. For, even though we may have the ability to choose, we are never able to choose the consequences of those choices.