We Make Choices And Pay The Piper Accordingly

One of my regulars bought her husband a latte today saying, “Maybe it will make him feel better.” Naturally I inquired. She says he’s working too much and doesn’t even have time to go to the gym. He’s all stressed out and in a bad mood. What I didn’t say was, “It’s a choice.” We make choices in life and pay the piper accordingly.

According to today’s Los Angeles Times, “In ground-breaking action, the Los Angeles Unified school board voted Tuesday to ban suspensions of defiant students, directing officials to use alternative disciplinary practices instead.” In an interview on talk radio today one of the teachers indicated that the teachers are upset about this because they have fewer and fewer options to maintain discipline in the classroom. We make choices in life and pay the piper accordingly.

My daughter’s English class is reading Lord Of The Flies. Tomorrow the teacher is having the class debate the subject of nature vs. nurture. The teacher has limited the discussion to Robert Ardrey’s theory for the nature side and Behavioral psychology for the nurture piece. Neither proposed argument allows for free will, Adam’s sin or inherent human characteristics. My daughter’s class notes cite Tabula Rasa as a point under, the ‘nurture’ category. Yet she doesn’t allow for the classical meaning which allows for greater personal freedom and spiritual reality. As understood by Locke,

tabula rasa meant that the mind of the individual was born "blank", and it also emphasized the individual's freedom to author his or her own soul. Each individual was free to define the content of his or her character - but his or her basic identity as a member of the human species cannot be so altered. It is from this presumption of a free, self-authored mind combined with an immutable human nature that the Lockean doctrine of "natural" rights derives.

 We make our choices and pay the piper accordingly.

We make seemingly little choices on a daily basis. Those choices will influence who we become as individuals and what we do with our energy and our time. When greater forces are exerted in life or the classroom those choices will have consequences. How we respond to each will affect the payment we receive in the end.