Freedom to Choose

Recently, we made the trip to San Antonio. In the course of the weekend, we decided to eat at Mi Tierra, a famous Tex-Mex restaurant in downtown. One of our friends told us it was near the Alamo, which is true in one sense, but we were thinking a bit closer when she said “it is right next to” it. I pulled out my GPS and punched it in.

We pulled out from the Alamodome and started on our way. As these things go, I began to hear the cacophony of “this isn’t anywhere near the Alamo!” I tried to politely inform my traveling companions that unless I had the wrong name we were headed the way we need to go. That was before it routed us to a street that was closed (perhaps for a wedding). I turned around to go around that block.

As the naysayers redoubled their chorus of doom and gloom, doubt crept in. Maybe we WERE headed the wrong way. I started out the way I thought we should go but without the surety I once had at the beginning of this adventure. In frustration, I snapped at my wife to call our friend and check the name of the restaurant as I cancelled the route (if you have ever tried to adjust your route on a GPS while driving through downtown you know that you’re not going to get rerouted fast enough to avoid a good bit of meandering).

So in this state of confusion and frustration we found ourselves headed back to the hotel and decided to walk. The reasoning was that if the hotel was near the Alamo and the restaurant was near Alamo, the walk would be short. Everyone agreed and peace was made . . . for a time.  As it turned out, we were about a mile from Mi Tierra and Grandma wanted to give up as we hit the corner of the block just opposite of the restaurant. You can’t see it from the corner . . . it’s blocked from view and it’s up the alley, out of sight. Only after scouting it out and assuring her that the goal was just beyond her sight, did she resume her tired steps to join us in some of the best Tex-Mex I’ve had.

Did Grandma exercise freewill?  Um . . . nope, she needed to see success to believe it was possible.  I didn’t fair any better with my failure to keep a level head and caving into pressure.  You see, it seems we have the freedom to choose all the time, but we exercise that choice very rarely, if ever.

So you find yourself at the end of the road (figuratively) and it looks like success will be the likely result, and what happens?  Things come together; the plan is followed through, and no effort is spared to ensure the win. But when it seems that failure is looming large, we tend to give up, throw in the towel and abandon the plan.

You have a choice on what to do with this message.  Close it and keep getting what you’re getting or choose to do something different.  Act on your dreams, and live life with passion.

Out of line

So I went to lunch today with a couple of guys I used to work with. On the way I asked them “of the people you know, whom do you know who is successful?” I suspect their answer is typical of a large number of folks. One settled on himself being successful and the other settled on his mom and dad. As the conversation went along, I encouraged them to work out the definition of success. Starting with the basics, such as food and shelter and moving on towards safety and a reasonable amount of security and some happiness. “Fair enough”, I thought. But I prodded a bit more, and asked them going beyond people they knew personally, who did they think was successful. Here the answers diverged and caused me to think “How does that work?”

Ashton Kutcher was the answer from the one who esteemed his own self successful. I had to inquire about whom we were talking. Turns out he is an Actor, Model, Producer, Writer and ex-Cherio-Dust sweeper for General Mills. A biochemical engineering student that dropped out to start a modeling career, he was so poor that he traded his own blood for money before his rise to fame. But then what happened? In his words, “I don’t believe that old cliché that good things come to those who wait. I think good things come to those who want something so bad they can’t sit still.”

The other answer? Warren Buffet. The same one that spent $25 with a friend on a used pinball machine. The year was 1945 and within months they owned 3 machines in different locations. He then spent the next 25 years learning and growing in the investment world. In 1952, he was an unknown man in Washington D.C., ariving at GEICO’s door on a Saturday, knocking until he was allowed in by a janitor. It wasn’t for another 18 years that he became the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. A student of the Dale Carnegie public speaking course, he now spends 12 hours a week playing the card game, Bridge.

What followed was an interesting the observation of the first friend. “Out of line”, he declared. Indeed, both of these found a “different way”. in the words of Robert Frost:
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.