Thursday, September 29, 2011

Remember these books ?

I used to LOVE "Choose Your Own Adventure" books.  There was, when I was a kid at least, a whole series of these books and I used to literally read them over and over and over againIf you've never read one, then you would not understand why that last line is so amusing.


With CYOA books, you read a very short story to begin with and then get to a point where you must choose one of two options.  Each option will continue the story by telling you which page in the book to turn to.  Then you will read a page or two and be given another choice to make.  This repeats until the story ends, which is usually in one of about 4 or 5 different ways.

I would read these books over and over and over again to see if I could find a way to get to each ending.  You couldn't just read the book in order to find the endings because they wouldn't really make sense unless you "got there" through a series of experiences based on choices you had made.

I've been thinking alot lately that LIFE is just a huge version of these CYOA books.  You could argue that not all decisions you made had that big of an impact on where your life is now, but you cannot argue that you arrived where you are totally against your will.  YOU made the choices that led you to where you are at THIS VERY MOMENT and you "own" them.  Sometimes you don't have to be very far down that "wrong choice path" before you wish you had chosen differently, but you have to live with what you decided.

This is a movie I had
watched a long time ago
where this man's life is
dramatically different due
to just one event
being changed.
Hopefully, you can look back on the choices you've made and be proud of them, or at least agree that you wouldn't have changed them because you like where they have led you.  That is the case with me (no pun intended).  Even the unquestionably "bad" decisions I have made shaped my current life.  As much as I'd like to change them, I worry that they would have somehow kept me from the wonderful life I am living right now and so I am inclined to just want to leave them alone.

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1 comment:

  1. Very insightful blog post! Wow, you can be very deep and philosophical! I loved the CYOA books, but mostly for the fun of making the wrong choices on purpose and then having to start all over again! Unfortunately, I've applied that to my life...

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