Woody Cavenaugh

A power we have but often overlook is our power of choice. No matter what happens, no matter how much we feel that we have no control, we do. In all things we either choose, or we become paralized by our situation, and choose not to choose. The great power of our ability to choose is the near infinite range of choices we can make for either positive or negative.

Are their things outside of our power to change? Perhaps, we still can't choose to fly simply by waving our arms like wings, but we can choose to fly a plane, choose to hang glide, choose to design the aircraft of the future, or choose to shoot birds out of the sky out of pure jealously.

This weekend I was faced with a choice. I was wronged pretty mightily by a certain tubby [explitive deleted], I could tell you the name his mother gave him, but it wouldn't describe him in quite the way tubby [explitive deleted] does. I had a choice, I could go across the table and beat him until his mother wouldn't recognize him. Its what I wanted to do, even now days later it still seems like a pretty good idea. It would've been good for me and even better for the local fencing scene, but I choose not to. The event was for teens, and we the coaches of the sport must at all times be a positive influence on our students. No matter how much it hurts. Others choose not to be a good influence, and tubby [explitive deleted] is one of those. I choose not to be the same bad example he is.

Every day we are surrounded by people who exercise the power of choice in small ways. Every day we exercise the power of choice in small ways. Less often we see people who exercise the power of choice in big ways. When we do it is on the news. Either it is a crime report or it is a human interest story, someone somewhere made a choice so extreme that the world needed to know about it.

Big choices are always harder to make of course, either you have to live with the consequences like prisons full of inmates are, or you have to see the big decision through to the end like Urban Ministries or the YWCA's Downtown Fencing Club. Things happen to affect these big choices as well, the police arrest the criminal before the big crime is committed, or someone makes a choice that harms the completion of something like the Civil Rights Musieum in Greensboro.

I happen to believe that if people spent more time making big choices for the positive we would live in a better world. I also realize that choices born of disappointment, pain and revenge are really easy to make and feel great when you do it but in the end you have chosen to destroy and not create.

Is that how you want to be remembered?

Recognize the great power that you have in choice, and use it wisely for the greater good. Especially when this choice is a response to a poor choice by someone else. Doing so proves you have the greater power.

The choice to choose the positive solution may lack instant gratification, but in the end it holds greater rewards.

The poor choices of others often leads to greater opportunity for positive choices for you.