Choices

Where you stand determines what you see.  What you do determines who you are.  We have choices to make every day.  The choices can be simple.  They can be hard.  Even the smallest and unconscious choices have religious significance.  You decide to hold the door for someone at the store.  You kiss your spouse and say “good morning.”  You let someone in a rush get ahead of you in traffic.  You give someone you care about the benefit of the doubt.  You care about a neighbor in pain.  Or you don’t.

In the Gospel of Mark, there’s a story about a woman who is prepared to anoint Jesus before his death.  Jesus’ disciples are critical of her and declare the perfume she is about to use should be sold and the money given to the poor.  But Jesus says, “Let her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a good work for Me. She has done what she could do.” (Mark 14:3-9.)

Jewish tradition teaches, when you choose what is right in the smallest things, you are likely to choose what is right in the larger significant choices.  It’s a matter of habit.  The more you do what is right, the more you will do what is right.  That is the purpose of all the commandments in the Bible, to train us to be human beings.  God and Aristotle were right.  Habituation works.  If you want to be a kind person, act kindly.  If you want to be loving person, act lovingly.  If you want to be more caring, then act caringly.  Choices matter.

Joseph Epstein has a great quote about choices.  “We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, or the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live, courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dishonorably, with purpose or adrift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life.  But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed.”