Decisions

I got talking with Carlo last night about some weighty issues, like “If God owned a house and someone came up to the front door and said ‘Where’s your kids, I’m going to kill them’, and the kids were in the living room, would God lie and say they were in the garage?”.
So, we talked about sin, what defines it, what is a lie, the letter of the law vs. the intent of the law and all that good stuff.
We moved from that to a discussion of choices. Our generation has been raised with so many choices, so many opportunities to choose from. I can go into a store and find 10's of brands of deodorant, with many different flavors for each brand. I can go to a grocery store and stand there looking at an entire aisle of breakfast cereals, and finally make up my mind to get the same one I always get... (which doesn’t explain the 6 or 7 boxes on top of my fridge). There’s big cars, small cars, fuel efficient cars, gas guzzlers. There’s different styles I can ‘choose’ to be, or dress like. There’s an incredible number of career options to sort through and decide upon. There’s religions and gods and beliefs and philosophies. Sports teams, sports, politics, issues.
Now, some of these things are really important, and some require firm choices and stances, and that’s part of what defines who we are. I’m a Christian, but I’m not like those Christians, and certainly not like the ones of there.
Anyway, our choice discussion migrated towards relationships, and how for both of us there are girls that we know (have known) that we’ve been interested in, but just not enough to really decide to pursue. But, if we were stranded on an island with 10 other people, yah, we’d probably go for it with that girl. So, what’s stopping us now. Choices. And, it’s not a ‘what if she’s not the one’, cuz frankly, “the one” is bullshit. It’s more of a, ‘what if there’s someone else who’s a better match for me’, or ‘she’s just not ____ enough’. Sure, that’s a bit shallow, but who wants to settle, right? Or, are we just afraid of making the wrong choice? I’ll be the first to admit that if we both worked at it and were committed to it, me and any one of my ex-girlfriends could have had a great life together (OK, maybe not every one of them...), but ultimately, for one reason or another, one of us always ended the relationship before getting to that stage. I look at my parent’s generation, and for the most part, people my parent’s age, (that I know), got married in their early 20's to either their highschool sweetheart, or someone they met at college. I think my mom was my dad’s first girlfriend. It’s not that they didn’t have as many choices or options as I do, in terms of finding a life partner, I just don’t think they had the philosophy of choice ingrained in them that I do. They made their decision, stuck with it, and have been married (happily and other, but committed, and mostly happily) ever since. Maybe that’s what people refer to as the ‘good old days’.

For a completely unrelated and hilarious article about zombie-preparedness, read this.