Whenever we are here in mid-summer, my wife and I love to go browse the booths and listen to the music at the Estacada Summer Celebration. On one such year, we were strolling down Broadway (it sounds fancy to say it like that even though it’s just Estacada) and as she often does, my wife stopped to talk with a lady she knew. I walked away a little browsing the items in the booth and my eyes fell on a famous quotation in a nice wooden frame. The frame was nice but I was more interested in the quotation. I read it and wrote it on a note app on my phone hoping that the booth owner wouldn’t mind..
This quotation really got me thinking. I always wanted to to write something about it but had forgotten it until today when I found it again as I was checking all the little notes in my phone app. This quotation made me think of free choice. Of all that fills God’s good earth, we are the only creature endowed with what has been coined ‘The Majesty of Choice.’ Many creatures indulge in behavior that we consider outright wrong to say the least such as gerbils who eat their young when their living space becomes too small. In the case of gerbils, not only they do not have the choice, but neither have they been taught a moral compass. They just instinctively do what comes naturally to them. What about us then? We have this awesome thing called ‘choice’ which enables us to do good, to act right, and to even do random acts of kindness, and sometimes we do. I can bear witness that the world has given birth to great heroes who are not afraid to lay down their lives for others; people who, unlike gerbils, share their space at their own cost; but do they comprise the vast majority of all humanity? If not, why not? And mostly: what creates the difference between those who do and those who don’t? Does it have to do with choice? Do we have this awesome majesty of ‘choice’ but we don’t use it to choose the good, the right, and the moral but instead, like the gerbil, are lead by our ‘natural’ instinct? And if we don’t choose the good, the right, and the moral, why not? Is it because we do not love the good, the right, and the moral? We always choose the things we love. By the way, before I forget, you may be curious as to the quote that inspired me this muse. It is from the most prolific author history has ever known. His name is Unknown and he is credited with many more sayings like this one: ’WE ARE SHAPED AND FASHIONED BY THE THINGS WE LOVE.’ Maybe it’s another way of saying,’We grow like the people (or concepts) we live with’!
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