If You Decide To…

Did you grow up reading Choose Your Own Adventure books? If not, I’m sorry, because they are amazing. Each book casts you as the protagonist of a thrilling tale, and with every page, you make a choice. “If you decide to hide in the cargo hold, turn to page 16. If you decide to make a run for the hangar, turn to page 23.” You decide to run for it but, hedging your bets, you keep a finger in page 16 just in case your gamble results in capture and game over. Enough turns of the story in, and you’ve resorted to using strips of paper from a Lisa Frank notebook page to keep track of where you’ve been.

For a pre-teen, these books were just plain fun to read. They were also a way to practice making decisions. It was the lowest stakes possible way, because you knew that if you took a misstep, all you had to do was flip back to the page where your bad choice originated and take the other path. Would that real life decisions were so easy!

I recently re-read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. An Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, Frankl survived multiple WWII concentration camps. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he brings to the fore the concept of choice in light of the horribly traumatic experience of the camps.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

No matter the circumstance or constraints you are under, freedom of choice remains. I find this incredibly empowering, especially in today’s pandemic context. The first week it all became real for me, the unknown and unpredictable left me feeling highly anxious. I didn’t sleep well, I didn’t eat well, and I felt exhausted. With time to adjust to a new reality, I’ve worked to make proactive choices that support health and decrease fear.

I am grateful every day for the ability to choose. I am grateful that I can choose to drink a good amount of water and take vitamins. I am grateful that I can choose to stretch my body and take deep breaths. I am grateful that I can choose to connect with my family, friends, and neighbors via text, calls, and the good ole USPS. I am grateful I can choose faith in my Heavenly Father and in Jesus Christ. I am grateful that I can choose faith in the future.

Despite what I thought as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-reading kid, adventure isn’t one adrenaline-laced, decision-heavy event after another. Choice itself is the adventure.

**Ran across this article while writing this today. Totally relates, super interesting, and introduced me to James Stockdale, who I’d never heard of before.