Choices

I don't really have time to post a blog (Yes, I call a "post" a blog, inaccurately.  It just feels right.  Deal with it.) here.  I have a professional blog (my "principal's page" for my school constituencies--with variants for staff and for parents and students.  I have a blog that is part of my doctoral portfolio, tracking the evolution of my dissertation.  I have discussion forums to post in--as graded classwork.  I have a monthly newsletter to contribute to.  And papers, and reports, and memos and emails and so forth to write, in considerable bulk, every day.

Yet, here I am, posting here.  It feels safe, and cathartic, I guess.  This is my "no consequences" blog.  Sometimes, it is ok to indulge oneself.  Sometimes, that kind of a choice is even healthy, and productive, in the longer term.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about choices, and the cumulative importance of small choices.  I wrote, in a recent reflective paper, about an exercise I have done with students of mine, painting an analogy of standing at the 50 yard line of a football field.  I ask them to imagine one end zone to be filled with success (whatever that means to them) as great as they can imagine.  Riches, prestige, joy, love, self-actualization, being the best at something important, making a difference--whatever.  And in the opposite end zone, I ask them to imagine the opposite of that:  doom, gloom, despair, failure--"rock bottom."  I then talk about how every day, each of us is faced with small choices, and each choice is like a step in one direction or another.  The big take-a-way I want for these young adults is the apparent lack of consequence (position and perspective remain pretty similar after one step) of each choice, contrasted with the cumulative effect of many steps (even with a "two steps in one direction for each one step in the other" approach).  Right choices, a majority of the time, progressively move you in the right direction, and likewise the converse.

A recent book (on Ignatian spirituality, actually) brought that idea back home for me.  I'm working to consider my small choices, in the moment, and make sure they are heading me in the direction I want to go.

Time spent on this self-indulgent post, notwithstanding.