I remember one fine day, when my legs were little and my mind was quite young and brittle, I was in a store, tagging along with my elder brother. I tucked his long red t-shirt from below and cried “I want chips!”

“No, we are not getting any chips.” He replied

“But, I want it!” I demanded.

“No.”

“But, I want them!”

He sighed frustratingly then. “Okay. Which one?”

“I don’t know!”

“You don’t know?”

“No…”

He sighed more frustratingly then. “Come with me.” He paced quickly as I followed his tail towards a large variety of different flavored chips which were placed accordingly on big shelves. I still remember how alluring they were to look at. “Okay, now tell me which one do you want. The blue one?”

“Hmm… no.” I said, thinking the blue one was too bright of a color. “I want the green one!”

“Okay!” He began picking out the green bag of chips.

“No, wait! I don’t want green.”

Agitated, he sighed again, shook his head with irritation and placed back the picked up bag. “Then which one?”

“Hmm…” I began pondering once more. I stood right in front of the multicolored and alluring packages of chips with great focus ridden on my face, as if deciding what percentage of shares to split between partners of my multi-million dollar company. Still deciding “Do I want the green? Or do I want blue? Or maybe something different this time… Let’s go with red!”

“Time’s up! We are getting the blue one.” my brother finally declared, shaking his head with relief this time.

And even though I ended up not having clearly taken a decision. I realized a fact about this memory much later, a fact which deeply fascinated me. I found that during that moment of decision when I stood contemplating which mere bag of chips I wanted, I had an astonishing ability in my hands which I didn’t really recognize before. It was Choice.

Our ability to choose, whether or not, either or or, neither or nor, is actually pretty amazing if one thinks about it. Choice is very intricate to who we are and is quite conceptual to our belongings. “Should I do this or should I do that? Which option should I choose?”

This basic ability is remarkably simple yet it is responsible for all the complexities that we face in our lives. “Maybe I should have done this and things might have turned out very differently…” is just one of the thoughts that haunts us daily. And it is fascinating to wonder that our whole concept of human morale is only given birth to by Choice.

The fact that we can choose between what is good and what is bad is what makes us ultimately human. Our ability to chose is what makes us who we are on a fundamental level. Our choices define us. “Is he good? Is he bad? What kind of choices did he make?” These questions reside in each and every one of us.

Choice is incredible. Devastatingly simple yet unimaginably complex. But, in the end, there must be a reason that we have this ability with us. We have the power to do what is right and we have the equal power to do what is wrong. But, above all, we have the power to choose one between them.

We can choose what we want to become, what kind of a person, what kind of a human being we ultimately want to be. We all have this ability. We all can choose to be better, to be kind, to be helpful, to be loving, to be grateful, to be caring, to be responsible, and above all, we can choose to be good.

We all can choose if we want to, can’t we?

P.S – The art you see in this post was created by using Fresh Paint.