choice

  ...I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
     From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked.  One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
     I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.  I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.  

"the heart is the birth of will"

Listen:  We live in a world in which everyone is always in a hurry; no one has time for anything.  It's true for you, and it's just as true for me.  Well, in this situation each of us has to make a choice: either to be overwhelmed by our work or else to sanctify it.  There is no middle course.

Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for; it is a thing to be achieved.

Pleasure is great- but it doesn't last. Pleasure comes from your five senses. From a great meal, a nice glass of wine and a new car. Nothing wrong with these things- they make the experience of life better. But they are fleeeting...

Happiness is the DNA of pleasure. My point is simply this: Pleasure comes from something on the outside. Happiness comes from within. It's a state you create by choice. It's a decision. It's an act of will.

People can be happy while they are going through great pain and adversity. There's no pleasure evident in their external lives yet they are content on the inside. And conversely, tons of people are surrounded by pleasure (fast cars, nice homes, great clothes) but there is no joy within. So choose to be happy.

Some leaders are born, others learn to be leaders, but in truth leadership is simply a choice; a choice to acknowledge, honour and respect who you are.

The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

No fate but what we make.

Love is as love does. Love is an act of will--namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.

Yea, let all those who have ears to hear, listen. For I tell you this: at the critical juncture in all human relationships, there is only one question: What would love do now?