Choice

Today a YouTube video popped into my head that I hadn't watched for awhile.  It's a silly little video - two fairly average people singing a song with silly hand motions and facial expressions and things.  In the description, they describe it as "an unpretentious little song on the choices of life."  Yet somehow, despite its ridiculousness, it manages to have a deeper message that haunted me for weeks after I first saw this video, and I still find myself remembering it from time to time (like today).

Like many things in my life, it's in French.  Sorry anglophones.  The video has fairly decent subtitles on it (although "When you grow up" would be a better translation than "When you'll be older").  If you understand French the effect will be better, but what can you do.  Francophone or not, I invite you to watch it here:



Comme tu vois tout est ecrit d'avance 
Pour toi; pas besoin d'intelligence.
Tu as le choix d'aller ou on te dit.
C'est comme ca; bienvenue au paradis des hommes.

As you see, everything is already laid out
for you; no need to think about it.
You have the choice to go where they tell you to go.
That's how it is; welcome to human paradise.

If there's one thing that post-college life is filled with, it's choices.  Obviously, the choice about what you're going to do after graduation, which necessarily leads into where you're going to live, what job you're going to get, what apartment you're going to live in, what graduate course of study you're going to pursue, what long-term goals you want to be working towards, what you're going to cook for dinner, what TV show you're going to watch to procrastinate your homework, what politician you think is a joke, what politician you want to put unrealistic hopes in, who your new friends are going to be...what you're going to DO with your life.

I have a somewhat unhealthy preoccupation with what I'm going to DO with my life.  That seems to be the phrase adopted by recent college graduates.  Once you get handed your diploma and the socially expected and essentially predestined path for the first 22 years of the middle-class American life, the question on everyone's mind is "What now?"  Welcome choices to the stage.

Every kid is excited to grow up so that they can do whatever they want.  What this video made me think is this: how much choice do we REALLY have?  Really?  I'm not espousing some intense theology of predestination here, nor am I suggesting that we're all just robots walking around.  What I'm thinking is that maybe the decisions that we think make us unique don't make us so super unique after all.  Even worse, it's insanely easy for that which is unusually unique in us to be suppressed by other people's expectations.  Our society is so dualistic that you end up choosing sides instead of maintaining your unique ideas - are you a Republican or a Democrat?  A believer or an atheist?  What happens when you fall somewhere in the middle?  You confuse people.

You have the choice to go where they tell you to go.

Welcome to human paradise.

Lately I've been having major issues of vocation.  Almost every other day, I doubt whether or not seminary was the right choice for me.  I question my motivation for enrolling, I question my motivation for pursuing a ministry career, and I constantly question the depth of my faith.  I've been wondering lately whether all these doubts and questions arise from the fact that this stage in my life is requiring me to be the most individual I've ever had to be.  I'm living alone instead of within 500ft of my closest friends, I'm working toward a vague European ministry goal in North Texas where all  international ministry is oriented toward Hispanic countries, I'm at a seminary yet I'm not going for ordained ministry, I go to church alone, I have a job that almost no one understands, I'm studying Christian Education but don't want to lead church educational ministries.  I could list more, but that's a handful right there.

Here's the thing though:  what you're going to DO with your life is made up of what you're going to DO with today.  That was cheesy, but I said it.  And it's true.  A life is made up of a ton of individual days.  Still, it's so easy to get caught up in the little choices that don't really matter (a chop of beef or a fillet of whiting for dinner?).  Face it people: the people who you allow to influence your choices influence your whole life.  Where are your goals coming from?  Your passions and interests?  Your parents' expectations?  A social fable of "success"?  Where did your ideas come from? Are you reciting what you learned at school, or in church?  Are they based on the latest Hollywood trend?

I have several friends (and to an extent, can include myself in this group) who had big dreams of doing big things, but chose graduate school instead because it's more "practical" and more "predictable."  It's the "safe" choice.  And graduate school is good; Lord knows that in this economy a Master's degree is better than a Bachelor's degree if you're trying to get a good job.  But I'll admit to you, grad school was, for me, a safety net.  Another few years of school?  Been there, done that.  It's predictable.  It makes sense.

But what happens after the grad school security blanket gets pulled away?  Will I still have those big dreams, or will I fall back on yet another "safe" option.  Will I spend my life doing what is expected of me by society, by family, by classmates?  Or will I spend my life doing what I feel called to do, what I want to do?

Do I let people influence my major life decisions in the same way I let them influence the little ones?

It makes you think.