Choices--Choosing Happiness

The following started out as an email to my husband about an experience we were going through and it turned into an essay of sorts. The situation was that Chad was SUPER busy working full-time and going to school full-time for his Master's Degree, so all he did was work, plus we had a new baby. He hated his job too, and was struggling with the whole situation. We brainstormed and came up with the solution for him to work part-time at work (three 10-hour days) so he could do get homework done and still have time for a weekend to play, and he also asked for and recieved a different job position within his company. The positive results were immediate. But we had to make some financial adjustments when he started working part-time, which is what the essay starts with. Anyways, I just really think life is really what we make it. We could have stayed stuck in the crappy situation, or we could CHOOSE to take control and change what we could. So here it is:

Chad, you know how last night you talked about canceling our cell phones and I said, "I don't want to talk about this subject"? Well, I was refusing to look at the numbers because I didn't think I'd like what they'd say. If we don't face the facts, then we can pretend like we have enough money for our cell phones and keep them. We just won't talk/think about it and the problem will go away.

Well, I finally made myself look at our financial spreadsheet so I could input your new decreased income, and I was immediately able to calmly accept the fact that we'll have to get rid of them. Facing reality takes the emotion and debate out of it. No matter how badly I want cell phones or how I feel about getting rid of them, I can't argue with the cold hard facts: We don't have enough income to keep paying for them. I guess I could have purposely stayed ignorant to the facts and kept the phones, but then every month we would be in a deficit and not able to pay our bills, or we'd go into debt and use up all our savings and be barely scraping by every month. Hmmm, would I rather have financial freedom and peace or cell phones? When it's boiled down this way, it's easy. There's no question. I'll choose less stress any day. I wish everyone could see how these choices equate so directly to peace and freedom, and that they are exactly that: CHOICES. We would all become so empowered with this mentality and be able to control our lives better once we realize that life is usually what we make it. We are somehow or another usually responsible for how to get to where we want to go and for how we got to where we currently are. I think individual choice has much more to do with our "destiny" than fate does. Life doesn't just happen to us. We make it happen. This applies to all areas of life.

By the same token, you could have continued to work full-time and then we wouldn't have to make the choice between financial peace & phones. BUT that creates a different choice for us to make: Would we rather have more time together and more free time for Chad, or have cell phones? Again, it basically boils down to the same question from the previous scenario: Would we rather have peace or cell phones? Life is all about choices. Our environment and situations are usually a direct result of decisions we make. We are not victims. We need to see we got ourselves where we are, or else we won't feel that we are equally capable of fixing things if need be. We aren't stuck. We can brainstorm solutions or try to not get into the situation to begin with. I acknowledge that there are some instances when we truly are victims and things are completely beyond our control. Sometimes we are subject to nature, and no amount of personal choice will affect the outcome. And because other people also have free agency, at times we will have to suffer consequences that are the result of other peoples' choices. But we DO choose our attitudes and how we will feel and react to these situations where we honestly have no control (much easier said than done, I know). At any rate, we must remain grateful for all that has been given to us, even the gifts of intelligence and our talents and emotional capacity that make us able to choose. We are blessed that our decisions are more along the lines of "cell phones OR work less" instead of "pay house payment OR buy groceries," and while the choices to go through college and work hard and be disciplined got us to this point, the unearned gifts of supportive parents, being born in the U.S., scholarships, and being intelligent made these choices possible.