"Let choice murmur in your ear

And love murmur in your heart.

Be ready... here comes life."

Maya Angelou

As I post this entry to “100 Mondays”, I am on vacation with family visiting our loved ones in Canada. I wrote the thoughts below during some quiet moments over the Fourth-of-July weekend so that I could honor my choice to put my family and loved ones first while we have this time together.

Each day, we make thousands of choices. There are simple choices, like what word I choose to use next in this essay, and difficult choices, like how to respond to a difficult personnel situation. There are trivial choices, like whether to have coffee or tea with breakfast, and vitally important choices, like whether to stay in a job or seek a new opportunity.

Some choices affect no one but ourselves and others will impact the organizations, and people, we serve, or the lives of our loved ones. There are choices we make in the happiest moments of our lives and some made in our deepest moments of crisis or despair. Some of us face choices that mean the difference between life and death for ourselves or others.

The way I make choices has changed significantly over the past 35 years. Although my basic values haven’t changed all that much, I have learned a number of things that have helped me make better choices. Most of these are pretty basic life lessons, but it seems it took me some living to learn them.

One of the earliest lessons I learned is that we are much more together than any of us can be alone. The most exciting, and rewarding experiences in my early years were working with teams delivering amazing results for clients in the savings and loan industry. There was lots of overtime, situations where we had to invent new solutions in the course of a weekend, and moments when it felt like we were sending a rocket to the moon. I learned that the best choices for me would be those that let me be part of something greater than myself.

A much harder lesson to learn was that each of us is responsible for our own happiness. It took years of my not being able to make others happy and of not being made happy by what others did for me, and a failed marriage, to learn this one. I fought this learning but, in the end I learned to choose what will make me happy and, what was much more important, to fully accept the responsibility for the results of my choices. Now I can choose to do things for others because it brings me joy to do so, and I can experience joy in the things others choose to do for me, without expecting that we will make each other happy.

I’ve long understood that money isn’t everything, but I’ve learned how freeing it can be to choose those things in life that are so much more important. Working in education is not the path to wealth, but the working to make a real difference with colleagues who care about this work has been a good choice. Given the choice of pursuing a higher-paying job in another city or staying with the woman I had fallen in love with, and her children, it was clear that more money paled when compared to more love.  I’ve chosen to be with family and to have less stress over money. The less stress thing hasn’t always worked out, but I’m very happy with my choice.

Then a day came when my wife and I faced a choice between money and freedom. Her job stress was climbing while her satisfaction in her work was declining and she had the opportunity to accept a volunteer role that would allow her to work in her passion. With the help of a good financial advisor, we were able to tighten our belts a bit, define a better budget, and make that work. I can honestly say, we’ve never regretted the choice and it has enriched our lives immeasurably for many years now.

While I haven’t done a very good job of learning to say “no”, I am learning how not to say yes to things that are wrong for me. Earlier in my career, any new opportunity to make a greater difference received an automatic “yes” from me and I figured I’d be strong enough to take it on and make it work. Today, I realize that some of the making it work needs to be part of the decision-making process and to include making it work for me. Recently, I am choosing opportunities to make a more measured contribution that are healthier for me.

As I begin considering what I will choose in retirement, I imagine there are still life lessons waiting for me. I’m sure I’ll still need to work on when to say “no” and when to say “yes” and that this new adventure will unfold in ways that surprise me. I still remember being at a concert where Bob Dylan and the Band played “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and I’m still sure I agree that “He not busy being born is busy dying.” I look forward to being busy being born for many years to come.