Chutes And Ladders

This indecision's bugging me

If you don't want me, set me free

Exactly who'm I'm supposed to be

Don't know which clothes even fit me?

So come on and let me know

Should I cool it or should I blow?

Should I stay or should I go now?

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double

So you gotta let me know

Should I cool it or should I go?

To wrestle and battle with decisions small and large is the essence of the human condition.  Some find it easiest and most comfortable to work for someone else, be told what to do and therefore leave themselves enough energy to be able to make other decisions once they are told they can go home for the day.  I spent about 9 years just trying to figure out what I was going to do for a college major, trying this and that, going to school in several different states and lacking much direction.  The only thing I could really focus on was the location of the nearest place to catch a fish and hopping from bar jobs at night and sporting goods store jobs in the day to help me afford to get to the river.  I only recall odd snippets of my education for Trivial Pursuit and such.  Most of my good learning that shaped me came through trying to understand the "Third Eye" of the Tibetan monks, or the work-wisdom of Ben Franklin through Poor Richard's Almanac.  I didn't worry about what I was "supposed to do" in the eyes of the world, and had no inner turmoil due to this lack of "real direction" -that is until a few years into my first career-type job that took away everything I had in my heart for what I really knew I was "supposed to do" with my time I was given.

  The Hindu have a caste system that puts the people of society into different roles based on their previous success in another life.  I get that, but they might be missing the point of letting themselves get out of the current level in the life they are in and just improve on what they have going on today.  What I understand though is that we all have the ability to do or not do what we know insides ourselves to be the next step in our lives.  Some are called to wake up and go to a place where they make calls to sell something that someone else made and if anything goes wrong with the product someone else is handling the support for it so they can rest assured that they won't have to answer for the sale.  It is a comfortable way to spend their days on this earth, but that is not me.  I often wish it were me because life could have been so much easier.  I wouldn't have had to wrestle and battle inside myself to get out of the "caste system" that I was allotted.  My wife wouldn't have had to watch me spiral in and out of control while balancing the desires of my heart with our false desire for a plastic house in the suburbs of our home town.  She wouldn't have had to spend a few years telling our daughters to "be extra nice to daddy" and "he's not really angry at you".

We are all playing a game of "Chutes and Ladders" from the day we come out of the womb.  Whether we are born to a hunting tribe in French Guyana or the son of a cattle baron in Texas we all start out at the beginning and have nothing.  The difference is that some get to land on more ladders to skip some of the work of walking the board - i.e.- the son of the wealthy cattleman.  But I believe that for as many ladders as he gets to land on he probably has that many chutes he could choose to slide down as well.  The son of the hunter in Guyana with a bone in his nose, has less peer pressure to steal a car and wrap it around a tree after washing down a mix of pills with a martini at a night club.  The boards are similar and what we know as success at the end is respectively the same.  We just need to focus on our game and not someone else's lest we miss our ladder and end up slipping down a chute.