There Are Many Paths to Eldorado
An important commitment we need to make for ourselves when making pivotal decisions is to fully embrace the path we choose. Often the only reason why a certain path might prove to be wrong is because we spent so much time looking back at those junctions on those choices we didn’t make. But the opposite is also true: how liberating it can be to realize that we can choose to make a path right by full-heartedly embracing it with curiousity and courage.
Sometimes people in our lives give us insights at exactly the right times for us to see the road ahead a bit more illuminated than before. One definite experience like that for me happened when I had to make a pretty major decision in my life. I had a few wonderful options for summer internships, each with its own strengths and drawbacks. And though have multiple great options is much better than not having any at all, it also poses different kinds of challenges when we have to settle on one course of action.
I remember I was chatting with a mentor from my church about the struggle I was having in making the right decision. Then he asked me a question so basic and fundamental that now that I’ve internalized it over the years, it’s hard for me to believe I haven’t always known and lived true to it. “What makes you so certain that there is only one right choice?”
You see, up until that point I had been living under the impression that my life was like a path dictated by some internal GPS that, if followed precisely, it would lead me to the places I could make the biggest impact and progress the most personally. Hence my dilemma. What if I chose a different path off from the trajectory that internal map called for? Wouldn’t that mean that I would inevitably end up in places of less meaning, value, and purpose to myself and to the people I interacted with along the way?
It dawned on me then, and I’ve lived a decade according to this principle to back this up, that there are many wonderful paths we can take in life. Very, very few of us are destined to be any one profession or live in a specific community or marry a certain person or make friends with certain people. All of these experiences that are a lot more like gifts we might enjoy along any of these paths. There are amazing people everywhere. There are organizations and people who warrant our help and service, whose consequences can be profound no matter where we end up or what we do.
The more important commitment we need to make for ourselves when making pivotal decisions is to fully embrace the path we choose. Often the only reason why a certain path might prove to be wrong is because we spent so much time looking back at those junctions on those choices we didn’t make. But the opposite is true: how liberating it can be to realize that we can choose to make a path right by full-heartedly embracing it.