Sunday Scriblings 8/4/07: Decisions with haiku at the end

I've made the decision not to use this topic. Okay, Just kidding. This is too easy to miss out on and maybe when I am done writing I can come up with a few haiku.

A decision is just another word for a choice. You always have a decision or choice to make about everything and the consequences that follow are always yours alone. Some examples:

1. You can choose to play golf in a storm; you may get struck by lightning. The lightning is not your fault, but by putting yourself into that situation with your decision, if you get hurt the blame falls on you.

2. You can choose to get involved with a drug addict or alcoholic partner that is abusive. In the end you will be hurt. Sometimes they will steal, sometimes they beat you up, sometimes they are just terrible partners, and worst of all terrible parents. This blame obviously does not fall on you alone, but walking away would have been the best choice, often with a restraining order. (I am a counselor and work with people like this so I feel okay saying this. I realize lots of people will disagree and that is okay.)

3. You can decide as a child that you want to throw a lighter into a fire and see what happens. You might singe your eyebrows or hair by being too close, or much worse have serious burns or start a big fire. I have done this too. As a kid the responsibility falls on your parents to teach you, but once they have you need to listen and not be hard headed. I only learn by doing it and once again this example is me.

Enough with examples. Now to the fun part.
The best and worst decisions I have made in my life involve drugs and relationships. I will always believe regardless of what people say that any street or presciption drug one takes that is not prescribed is a gateway drug to more. I've been there, and done them all, and I am not proud of it, but it was my decision to continue. I was never coerced or forced to do anything, I made a choice and I accept the consequences. Now that I have been clean for a long time I am more effective at my job because I understand where addicts are coming from. When one thinks about it, everyone is addicted to something. From spending money, Internet, video games, writing, smoking, drinking, drugs, sex, clothes, or food, people always have a vice. Overcoming that is one decision that is close to impossible and likely the hardest decision one will ever have to make, but it will always help create a better life in the end.

The best decision I have made is getting married, and before that dating enough people that I understood that little arguments and spouts were part of being involved with people. If the first sweetheart you have from high school ends up your partner, then you have to learn all that in marriage. I consider myself lucky that I had enough bad decisions to learn the hard way (the only way I really learn) that life is not supposed to be perfect. If it was, everything would be great ( and boring). You have to have bad to enjoy the good. I had what, at the time I thought, my heart broken probably twenty times by bad decisions and I am sure I hurt some other people as well. Life is a learning process if nothing else. I think the reason the divorce rate is so high is because people don't really know the other person well enough to commit for life. Temptation is nothing more than another decision and you just have to say no. Past experience should have taught you that. If not you are bound to make the mistakes everyone else makes first that has a healthy marriage. Granted some people get it right on the first try, but not many.

Alright, enough for now. Here are my haiku

Decisions haunt me
Choices made without thinking
What will happen next

Consequences wait
Prayer will not fix one's problems
Answers within grasp

The past tries to teach
If only we will let it
So not to repeat

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