Life and the Mirror of Choice

Life always presents us with choices—chances to be who we are. Our choices make us who we are, and what we are says something about us to the world. We can provide truth or dishonesty, but what finally tests us is what we choose. The people around us will mostly agree with what we offer, supporting what we value in ourselves.
There’s a maxim that we will continuously hear the echoes of a wise man’s voice wherever we move in—whether the echoes are light or dark depends on us. What we cultivate in our souls grows. We inevitably darken our vision if we feed it with negativity. As Mark Manson says, it’s not necessarily the gigantic or distant fears that bother us—it’s the close and familiar ones that shape us most. And when we attempt to stifle or eliminate our struggles, they tend to bounce back with a vengeance. Rather, we need to confront challenges head-on and use them as opportunities for real growth.
Consider the person who formerly struggled to get online. When at last they can, they gorge—starving for connection, information, identity. It is like a graduate enters among fellow graduates, phones glowing in shared silence. Here, internet access is not merely a convenience, but a badge of belonging. One of them, a recent graduate, is photographed glued to his screen even when he’s flying off to a destination—a world that verifies him. The others stare at him, bewildered—whether he exists, or he’s just a digit of a hyper-real delusion.
We need to be trained to base our lives on applause, no, but on truth. Schemed-out lives and fabricated news may rake in transient praise, but they rarely nourish the soul. Instead, we have to spend on clarity, truth, and determination. That is the deal we need to strike—with ourselves, with those around us, and with the time that we have been blessed.