Choosing your adventure…

They came about after the creator ran out of bedtime stories to tell his daughters, so he asked them what they thought the protagonist should do next. He would then continue the story based on their choices.

So…you’re a kid going on vacation and suddenly find yourself kidnapped. One wrong move and you could be hurt. Will you choose to go to page 8 or to page 14?

Writing a book can be challenging, but one that has multiple endings must be more difficult! Though each book starts with the same pattern, they each offered many options for the reader to choose from when it came to how the story would end.

If you read one of those books back in the day, did you do what I did? Did you almost certainly cheat by keeping your thumb between the pages, just in case you made the wrong choice?

We start out on page 1 and then, throughout our days, we make choices- choices that bend our paths in different directions.

Robert Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” is a poignant reminder that one choice will lead to another. And in most cases, we find that keeping our thumb between the pages in order to go back doesn’t really work.

So maybe we can’t turn the pages back, but we can make new choices and one new choice might just be to reframe our past choices. After all, those choices (disastrous or immature as they may have been) have enabled us to become who we are today.

• Our current strengths,
• our hard-purchased wisdom, and
• our renewed appreciation of life with all its blessings

are the consequences of those choices.

I believe we can grow and learn from each choice and each consequence. And be the better for them.

After all, we are doing the best we know how, with what we know now. And when we know better, we will do better.

Right?