Choices, Obligations and Guidelines

Talking about the way we live in this world from a teenage perspective and how every action adjusts the outcome for a person.

Someone asked me this question not too long ago and I thought it fit very well into this post and wanted to share.

If you were offered $10,000,000 right now, would you take it? Some entitled people might argue that this kind of money could seed into addictions/depressions or other issues for a person, but let’s be real, if you were offered $10Million you’d take it in a heartbeat.

Now let’s take that same question and add a catch. If you were offered $10,000,000 right now, except you don’t wake-up tomorrow, would you take it?

The obvious answer is “no.” Essentially this is just a fancy way of saying that you value your life more than you value $10,000,000. In a radical sense your choice would determine the actions that follow drastically. Obviously this is a bit of an over-exaggeration of what I’m implying but the underlying meaning is that every choice a person makes somewhat adjusts the next moments of their life, whether it be large changes or small.

To be completely honest I don’t really know where I’m going with this, I made the choice to begin this post with that question and here I am struggling to link it back to the main message of this… I guess the choice I made to include that has caused me to think hard about what I’m about to say next and what I’m saying now so it all makes sense, although I made another choice, that was to include this all, I have decided not to go back and restart, mainly because I want to be as “real” as possible when I write this. (And partly because I’ve thought too much into this to restart now.)

So, choices, obligations and guidelines…

A person has obligations, a person makes choices and a person follows guidelines.

generally, obligations and guidelines are set by others and choices are made by you. That’s why they are so important to you, the reason why you ponder about whether or not you should order a pizza with pineapples or not is because you have power over that decision. In todays society we have so many choices to make, important or not. But as people we treasure these choices and can label them as our own, because they are… the individual choices you make is why you are different from the next person, but your obligations and guidelines are why you are the same.

Obligations are decisions that “must” be followed. It’s your obligation to get yourself to work in time for your shift because you’ve signed an agreement to be there. Obligations are much harder for people to go against than choices because they hold more visible consequence when they are broken. You only know when a choice is bad after you experience the outcomes of it, whereas, outcomes already show what will happen after you follow them or not. If you don’t make it to work, there’s a possibility of getting fired, then that snowballs into not having the money for rent, food, activities etc. But if you are there on time then all is okay.

A guideline is only something that is “recommended” to be followed, there’s no real consequence if you follow them or not, it’s more something that could slightly adjust your outcome because it revolves around another persons depiction of you. You might be recommended to buy a car and drive to work yourself, that way hours can be more flexible etc, but you want to take the train, nothing changes, you still get to work on time, you still make the money to cover your rent and food. The only difference is that people might think differently of you because you followed the guidelines or didn’t.

At this point, the significance of the 3 ways of action come in order from obligations being the most important to guidelines being the least. (Choices in the middle.) but, we also know that choices can be so much more life-changing than obligations if the right combination of outcomes and actions curate to form a mindset in a person where they make the decision, they make the CHOICE to break an obligation. BOOM. The loop is over. You’ve finally made the choice to change your outcome.

By escaping the guidelines and obligations you become your own person, you are now different from others. In the end, i believe that it’s obvious that choices outweigh obligations 10 fold. And the only way to find that out is to make the choice. Wait for the outcome. Bad outcome? Cool, here comes another choice to make, and another and another and another. They bombard you in a never-ending line of choice after choice. Guidelines and obligations only work to direct the choices. But sometimes, only sometimes, navigation fails and you are able to break away from the natural flow of things…

So make that choice, quit that job you’ve dreaded the last 10 years, leave that toxic relationship, start a new, better one. It’s all up to you, don’t let your obligations and guidelines determine your future and fate.

And in the wise words of every graduation story ever, carve your own path.

-Chayse