more about Choice Points
"OK, Mr. Smarty pants hiker-boy," (direct quote) "tell me more about Choice Points and what are they?" Choice Points are something that occur to each of us throughout our lives and begin at a very young age when we bear witness to something that causes us to stop and reevaluate our position and decide our course of action. The decision can be a conscious one or subconscious like the response to some tragic or threatening event in our childhood that we don't even remember anymore. The result is a change in the course or path of our lives. The point of change might result from something traumatic like abuse, violence, hunger, natural disaster, abandonment and not so commonly thought about are the results of witnessing acts of kindness, love and generosity.
Choice Points offer us the opportunity to take a different path from the one we are on now. As a child, these may have appeared to have been forced upon us but that simply isn't true. Two children can experience the same event and have two totally different reactions to it - something is at work here. As we get older, we often choose to ignore the Choice Points that are presented to us by refusing to look inside ourselves and find the spiritual guide that is trying to show us the way. The more we ignore the message, the higher the drama tends to get until we finally choose to deal with it, or not. The accidents become more serious, the illness or disease gets stronger, the financial stress keeps repeating, the careers keep ending, the dramatic episodes of our life start to spiral out of control - all in an effort to get our attention. On the West Coast Trail, I got stranded on a dangerous boulder field near Owen Point and found recurring issues about abandonement and independence rear their ugly heads in very dramatic fashion. Finally, I made the choice to trust in something beyond myself and stand on my own two feet (literally) and move in the only direction left to me - forward!
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