There Comes a Time to Stand Up and Choose!

“There comes a time in every man’s life and I’ve had many of them.”
– Casey Stengel

I came across this quote recently.

We do have these moments of choice, many times in our lives.

Casey is actually referring in his quote, to an earlier quote, as he assumes that we will know what time he is referring to. Although he only mentions “men”, his idea also applies to “women” or to everyone.

It reminded me of one of the original quote, which is.

“There comes a time in every man’s life in which he has to stand up and choose between what is easy and what is right.”  -not sure of the author

Haven’t been able to find who said this exact quote, so I may have re-worded it in my memory.  There are actually many quotes that are similar to these quotes.

Here is a similar one, from Martin Luther King, Jr…

“There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right.”

We do have these moments of choice, many times in our lives.

When we are infants, we can only follow and copy those around us.  When we become children, we start to have some choice.  But we often find at home or in the schools, that when we choose, we are told we are wrong.  After some time, we can easily give up and stop trying to choose our own actions.

The ability to choose between, what benefits us and what benefits the most people,  is what distinguishes us from animals.  For them their behavior is hard-wired into their instincts.  While humans can choose.

To generalize too much, but still try to not be too wordy. I’ll give some observations from my own life.

But when we are young adults {late teens and twenties} we are more inclined to choose to do something “different” from our parents. We do this to experience for ourselves if what our parent’s keep telling us not to do, is really that bad.  At this age, we aren’t comfortable at all, so nothing seems easy.

We don’t have anything at this age, so we have nothing to lose.  This is why most countries send the young adults to war.  They are willing to take risks that older people usually don’t take.

When we survive this age, we usually conclude that most of what are parents were telling us is correct.  But as we grow older we come to know we will survive despite our mistakes, then life become easier. We also, now have something, we could lose (family, house, car, reputation, etc.)  Then we have less tension in our lives and enjoy some comfort, we start to slowly choose comfort over “right”.

Initially, this may be OK. But over time, deep within we sense that life is, “not as it used to be”.

The meaning of our life starts slipping away.  We then remember back to the “good old days” when we were young adults.  Although we didn’t have much then, we risked and lived fully.

I’m interested in what you think about life as a young adult and the choices to make.

Remember the choices we make today, lead to the actions we take.  The actions we take today, create our future.