You met your potential spouse at your workplace/family gathering and took the initiative of further meetings. The person chose to respond to you in a positive manner. Then you proposed. He/She thought over it and accepted. You got married. Your life journey took a different route than what was earlier.
Where you are today, is that a result of just your choice or the choice of the other person too?
You prepared for a job interview and attended it. The person interviewing you took a liking to you. Of course, you were qualified for the job but so were 20 others who came along with you for the interview. Only two vacancies and the employer chose you as one of the candidates. You accepted the job offer and your career zoomed along a path.
Where you are today, is that a result of just your choice or the choice of the other person too?
After many years of marriage and a lot of desperate times, the woman was pregnant. The couple was ecstatic. A few days later they were driving on the highway and there was oil spillage from an unknown vehicle on the road. The wife who was driving lost control of the vehicle, it skidded and she was hurt and she lost her baby.
Is the misfortune the result of their choice of having the baby? Going for a drive? Husband allowing her to drive? Wife’s mistake of not spotting the oil spill earlier? The vehicle owner who has spilt the oil? The mechanic who had not tightened a part properly that led to the oil spillage?
Often when we look at life events and where we are in the journey of life, we assume that everything that happens to us is the result of our choices. We take credit for all the success and blame ourselves for all the failures. Is what happens in our life just a sum of our choices? Why is it that we fail to see that lots of people around us make choices which impact us both positively and negatively? Everyone who does hard work does not become successful. Everyone who comes from a wealthy family does not make a success of his business, everyone who is good looking does not have it easy in life, everyone who is academically brilliant has not succeeded in life.
Our choices do have a role in our lives. You might not have married the person if you did not take the initiative, you might have never got into this career if you did not attend that interview, the woman would have suffered a miscarriage if hundred other things outside her had not happened.
Our lives are more impacted by the choices that others make - people known and unknown to us. It is not the result of only our choices. Deep under the surface, we are more connected to others than we can see.
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