Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Life is a matter of choices, and every choice you make makes you. John C. Maxwell

I started reading The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday at the beginning of the year. What a great idea to read one uplifting message every day, except I haven’t read it every day, but I still enjoy it even though I am not doing it right.

Does it matter if I read the July 8^th message on September 12^th, does it change the message? No, it does not. What matters is that we bring good ideas into our lives and that we act on them. If we could follow everything in The Daily Stoic we would be better people. Joan Didion wrote, “The willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life – is the source from which self-respect springs.”

We will never take advantage of every opportunity and make the best decision every day of our lives. That is probably an expectation that cannot be met. But we can try to live our lives in such a way that we are proud of ourselves most of the time and we make the best decision most of the time and can look ourselves in the eye when we look in the mirror, most of the time.

We were having a conversation about commitment last night and our son-in-law was relating a conversation he’d had with one of his friend’s mothers who said she didn’t think living together is the same commitment that marriage is. Getting the male view now that I have a married son, and son-in-law is different now these young men are feeling the weight of being the head of the family. If you don’t follow, how can I lead? This is one of the questions they are asking not just of their relationships but of relationships and society in general.

Everything in your life is a reflection of a choice you have made. If you want a different result, make a different choice. Unknown

Commitment is getting through the tough stuff and persevering when we want to give up. Marriage is a partnership and it works best with mutual love and respect but also when one is the head, and one is the heart in the relationship. We don’t like the word obey; it makes us feel like children. When I watched an episode of The Crown, Princess Elizabeth insisted that the word obey was in her marriage vows. It didn’t go into why this was important to her.

My son-in-law said to our daughter, if we are in a burning building I need you to follow my direction, you have to trust me, we can’t be arguing about the best way forward, just do as I say. If we can’t trust our husbands to make the best decisions for our family, why were we interested in marrying them?

Do we want someone that tells us to do the dishes instead of writing our blog, of course not. Most of marriage is a conversation about how we want to proceed, and what is the best course to take, but sometimes we need a decision made, and that is when the leadership of the husband comes into play. There is security in knowing that we don’t have to look after everything, we have a partner that is looking out for the well-being of the family.

When women can afford to stay home with their children and still have a good standard of living I think a lot of us will take that option. I may be wrong, but I do believe that most women want to have children, that it fulfills us in a way nothing else can.

Life is not perfect, children are orphaned, and women are widowed. Even though it may not be popular, I believe traditional marriage gives most people the best chance at happiness, success, and security. We need to develop our character, no matter what other choices we make in life if we are to be happy with what we have done with our lives at the end of it.

Some day we will reach the end of our lives. It will be over, no more choices; will we be happy with the ones we made? The more we are happy with the choices we make, the more we will feel it was a life well-lived. I think this is the goal, to get to the end of our lives and feel we did the best with what we had. To feel we lived a life with few regrets.

This doesn’t mean we get to tell people how to live their lives. Everyone gets to make their own choices; we only get to control ourselves. It also doesn’t mean that there aren’t better choices and encouraging people to make better choices is wrong.

You are free to make whatever choice you want, but you are not free from the consequences of the choice. Unknown

Life is about choices. Some we regret, some we’re proud of. Some will haunt us forever. The message: We are what we chose to be. Graham Brown

Your life changes the moment you make a new, congruent, and committed decision. Tony Robbins

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

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