{"id":1052,"date":"2013-06-17T11:42:42","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T15:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/?p=1052"},"modified":"2013-06-17T19:11:07","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T23:11:07","slug":"choices-and-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/?p=1052","title":{"rendered":"Choices and Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201c<\/i>It is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.\u00a0 – J. K. Rowling<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i>You know how some conversations stay with you to play again in your head at the oddest times? Several weeks ago, I had one of those conversations with someone around choice.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s a choice,\u201d she insisted hotly, \u201cand I make it every day. And sometimes, it\u2019s not easy.\u201d What has stayed with me is not the choice she makes but her awareness that she is making it.<\/p>\n

As a writer, choice plays a dual role. I make choices that impact my writing: how long I spend working on my novel each day, whether to include or cut a character out of the story, how many days to blog, what to write about on my blog, what content I put out on social media and the list goes on. I also create characters and they make choices. This is even trickier because I have to step into that character\u2019s head and ask myself what the character would do. Often they make choices I wouldn\u2019t, and at times don\u2019t approve of and because they are living in today\u2019s world, some of them don\u2019t realize they are making choices that will have consequences.<\/p>\n

There seems to be a lack of awareness in our culture today that we are making choices. We see this from the highest levels of government down to the shopping carts in our local supermarkets. Over and over again we hear the refrain, \u201cIt’s not my fault.\u201d\u00a0 People seem to be genuinely unaware that they chose to spend the money, take the loan, attend that college, select that career, eat the fast food or avoid the walk. If we struggle with the concept that we have a choice, then the idea of that choice resulting in a consequence is completely foreign to us. How did we end up in debt, under-employed, unable to buy a home, underwater in the home we own or obese?<\/p>\n

Yesterday was Father\u2019s Day. Two years ago, I wrote a blog post about my father (Remembering My Father<\/a>). There\u2019s nothing I can add to it. I doubt my father gave any thought to being a good father. He was our father and he loved us. I am pretty sure for him that was enough and it ended there. Yet he showed us how to live by what he said and how he lived his life.<\/p>\n

The summer I was nine I met a little girl at a neighbor\u2019s house who played dolls with me while the adults played cards. She was visiting with her parents. They were my dolls. I had a family of dolls, each with a name and clothes beautifully made by my mother. This child didn\u2019t have a doll with her and I was happy to share mine.\u00a0 When it came time to pack up and leave, I impulsively offered her one of my baby dolls. \u201cTo keep for my own?\u201d She asked. \u00a0I agreed she could keep the doll.<\/p>\n

Later that night realizing that one of my babies was gone forever, I regretted my choice to give her the doll. I wanted the doll back. My father sat down and explained to me that what I did was a nice thing. He told me the little girl had never had a doll before. He pointed out how lucky I was that I still had several others. I said I was sorry she didn’t have a doll but I wanted my doll back. He stood up and said, \u201cYou made a choice and you have to live with it. You can\u2019t ask for the doll back. You gave it away.\u201d\u00a0 It was just one of so many gifts he gave me. I still miss him.<\/p>\n

\"All<\/a>
All choices lead to a consequence.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt is our choices… that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.\u00a0 – J. K. Rowling \u00a0You know how some conversations stay with you to play again in your head at the oddest times? Several weeks ago, I had one of those conversations with someone around choice.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s a choice,\u201d she insisted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-uncategorized","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1052"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1063,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1052\/revisions\/1063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathleenferrari.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}