Blog 3797 – 94.14.2026

We All Pick and Choose

And usually those people, places, and things we pick and choose fit easily within our existing frame of reference. But, sometimes there are exceptional people, places, and things that make us rethink our frame of reference and thereby transform our lives. Falling in love is I think one of the best examples of this. A man or woman has their whole life planned out, the college they will attend perhaps and their career, later after they are established, a home, a spouse, and children. Then out of the blue all those long and carefully thought out plans are reordered in the face of a new challenge, a person unlike anyone before comes into their lives and they are more than willing to reorder their lives entirely around that person. All other plans pale in comparison to a new plan.

Sometimes it is a book that causes us to rethink our presuppositions, to rethink long held opinions and even paradigms, those hard held beliefs upon which the framework of lives is built. Like a hurricane or flood levels long standing structures and washes away even the foundations upon which they stood these new people, places, or things force us to rethink, to rebuild our lives from the bottom up.

Some will think that we have lost our way or indeed our minds, others that we have just found a different if not a better way. It is after all not only a woman’s prerogative to change her mind, but a man’s as well.

Some years ago I heard an expression, “Change your mind and the rest will follow.” If it has been a long time since you came across a person, place, or things that caused you to change your mind, I feel for you. My mom said of my dad who married her when he was twenty-six and she nineteen that he was already an old man when she married him. My dad’s philosophy and world view in contrast to the quote above was, “Don’t confuse me with the facts, I’ve got my mind made up.”

Minds like beds are meant to be slept in, (among other more interesting activities), messed up, and remade with even new or at least laundered bed clothes. The opening lines of my daily mantra are:

“My heart and my mind are open, my arms and my hands are open, my mouth, ears, and eyes are open, to all the Universe has for me, for all the Universe to flow in and through me.” 

Change is an inevitable part of life, to deny it or resist it makes us old before our time and to feel sadly out of place. Contrast “This world is not my home, I’m just passing through” with “Heaven or home is within you.”

Contrast two other conflicting ideas about where we belong, “Space the final frontier” and “Making this world a better place.” Perhaps it is not either/or but both. At any rate we get to pick and choose for ourselves.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White