Dear LPG,

I recently read something on your pages which reminded me of a message I have been meaning to share.  I just wanted to write something about a phrase that I hear so much of the time and which is so often not true in the world that we live in today.   Many people see this planet that we live on as a bad place and I have to agree that for many living in it is not ideal, but how many times do you hear of someone who finds themselves having regretted something that they have done, telling others that he or she had no choice.  

I think that many of the choices that we make throughout our lives are difficult, but I believe that we all have choices all the way through our years on this earth. When we are young many of them are limited by the choices that our parents make for us but, if you take today’s average eight-year-old and compare their life with the life of a pensioner’s when they were that age, it is plain to see that the youngsters of today have many more choices than we did but, in general, there were always choices in our lives.

I would argue that, all too often, so many of us make the choice that is expected and is easiest; the choice that will cause us the least aggravation and the choice that will allow us to rock the boat with the fewest conceivable consequences, but we all have a choice. 

I had this argument with an acquaintance not so long ago and he asked for a ‘for instance’.

I know that there are many more serious dilemmas but let’s take the predicament that you might face when you receive a parking ticket which is unjust.   IC wrote about such a predicament on this very website back in August last year (►►►).  I find myself applauding the writer’s mother for making the choice to question the authorities’ decision on that occasion, because it would have been easier to find the money and pay the fine and to avoid the possible consequence of still having to pay after a potentially long and lost battle.

Many choices we each have to make throughout our lives are forged because of situations that are much more difficult than this one, and others are so much more simple, but we do have choices.  Every choice has consequences, and some are not pleasant, but having made one that does not have the right outcome, it occurs to me that it is often the case that a choice that was made at the beginning of the downward slope started it all. So, the question is asked ‘Why did you do that?’ and the answer so often comes back, ‘I had no choice!’

I think that whatever the situation and the consequences, predictable or not, we do all have choices.  We have to own them and put them down to experience.  After all, most of the people who are accepted to have become really successful in this world (however you define ‘successful’) have often made some really negative choices on the way to that success.   

OK, Hither Green

LPG offers the second article that IC sent us which tells of the outcome of the choice made at the start of her parking predicament… 

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