There's a reason that I named this blog "choosing my course". I believe that what truly defines us is the choices we make. I know that I'd rather define myself by my intentions, but that's not reality. Some people abdicate their responsibility for their own choices. Some of the people that I love do this and it makes me very sad and frustrated. The reason I originally started this blog (even though I didn't post very often at the beginning), was because I got a slap in the face and realized I needed to take control of my own choices.
My parents were supposed to go to Alaska for vacation in the late summer of 2010. But my dad was feeling so crummy that they had to cancel the trip. That fall my dad had a heart catheterization and the doctor came into the room afterwards to tell us about the results. He told my dad that he had been given a second chance to make different choices back in 1998 when he'd had a heart attack and quintuple bypass. My dad had actually died that night, but thankfully my mother is a geriatric nurse practitioner and my parents had called the ambulance previously. So when his heart stopped he was already on the stretcher and the EMTs were able to revive him.
The doctor told my dad that there wasn't much more they could do for him. The bypass surgery was to give him the opportunity to exercise, eat right, and control his type II diabetes. My dad hadn't chosen to do any of that. I know that he feels like some of those choices have been taken from him because he was injured in both the Vietnam war, and again when I was in Kindergarten. So he's in a great deal of pain most of the time and it makes it difficult for him to exercise. He also fights depression from a rather unhealthy upbringing with an abusive father. But the reality is that he could still choose to eat right and start small with exercise.
My dad still hasn't made any different choices and still doesn't feel well. But I heard the doctor loud and clear that day. I had allowed myself to get a bit overweight at 150 pounds. I'm only 5'5" so that was too heavy. That was when I started recording all my food and exercise and in only 3 1/2 months I lost 35 pounds and got back down to my high school weight of 115 pounds. (I actually went lower than that for awhile so I started adding back in more calories, because that was just too skinny.) I felt strong and healthy and proud of my choices. I've allowed myself to put some of that weight back on and am now working to take it off again. For some reason it's been harder this time, but making myself accountable on here should help to at a minimum shame me into making better choices!
So I actually picked the name for this blog very consciously, in an effort to remind myself that it's not what I want or intend that matters. It's what I actually choose to do that matters. One of my favorite lines from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech is, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." I truly believe that we discover the content of our character by the choices we make, and that is a valid way to judge myself. So I'm going to continue "choosing my course," and while I have no illusions that I'll always make the right choices, I will keep trying and getting myself back on course.
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