Choose Your Own Adventure

I was recently reminded of one of my favorite book series as a kid: Choose Your Own Adventure.

The concept was simple enough. Every few pages you were given a choice, and that choice led you to another page in the book. Your choices created the story. It was fun because I was the star of the story (it's read in the 2nd person: "You are lost in the jungle...") and it was empowering (to some degree I drove the plot).

I recently read an artilce on line that reminded me of the book series. In it, the author makes a statement.

"Life is like that. It's waiting for you to decide whether you'll be average or remarkable."

Initially I was like, "Yeah! Life is just like Choose Your Own Adventure," and I think in some ways it is. But there is a significant difference.

You can't start life over.

As a kid I particularly enjoyed the aspect of Choose Your Own Adventure books that allowed a "do over." I could go back to the beginning (or anywhere in the middle) to make a different choice if bad things happened. None of the ramifications of the past choices mattered. It's as if they didn't exist. I could read through 40+ potential endings to the book.

But in life - this life - we get one shot. Each choice (hunt down the elephant? or ride the hippo through the swamp?) changes everything. We don't get to turn the pages backward to start over. As Anna Nalick poeticized a couple years ago: Life's like an hourglass glued to the table.

So as we're making "big-ish" life decision at our house about education, careers and geography, I'm transitioning from "mostly scared" to "still scared but very excited" as we choose our adventures as a family. And as we keep choosing and turning, I'm exciting about what's on the next page.