Choices Made Today Are
the Key to Our Future

March 28, 2006 

Since I am not a fatalist, I find it a little frustrating to hear someone say, “It must have be fate” – or, “It was meant to be.”  Obviously there are times when things happen with total unpredictability. Most of the time, however, our life situations can be explained by a series of past choices. 

As a friend of mine often says, “You can choose your choices but you cannot choose the consequences of those choices.” Our various governments’ futures (or lack thereof) are determined directly by the choices make today. 

Our elected representatives are responsible for shaping the future. Despite this clear obligation, many don’t even make an attempt to be proactive – to influence destiny. Instead, they choose to wait and react to events as they happen. We need to be focused on helping our city, state or nation reach their potential by making great choices now. 

Here are just a few of the perspectives that can help elected representatives position our governments for a bright future: 

- Focus on Your Choices – we need to keep reminding ourselves of the importance of trying to make wise choices that will positively impact our futures. Technically a mathematical term, singularity is used in science to describe a point at which everything becomes uncontrollable, for good or bad. It is a great way to describe our choices. We can control our choice for a while but at some point the result of these choices takes over and we are left to deal with the consequences. That’s why as elected representatives we cannot let up. We must stay continually focused on making good choices because eventually those choices will come back to us in the form of consequences we cannot control. 

- Teamwork – By getting input from others, both inside and outside of government, you in the decision making hierarchy. Functioning as a team brings out the best in almost everyone. I recently read that Roger Bannister, the first human to run a four-minute mile, used teamwork to break a barrier that most people thought was unbreakable. I had always pictured him going out in his track shoes and breaking the barrier all by himself. Instead he did it with a team of three.

Bannister ran the first half-mile behind a runner who helped him start and get his speed going and the second half-mile behind another runner who helped him maintain the pace. What I had always thought of as an awesome individual feat actually was the result of people working together as a team. This is a great analogy of how we should act as elected representatives. 

- Focus on the Future – As important as it is to learn from the past, it is even more important to stay focused on the future.  The story is told of Robert E. Lee traveling through Virginia after the Civil War and meeting a Southern belle, who pointed out a war-ravaged tree in her front yard. It had been damaged by Northern troops as they passed through and she told Lee she intended to let it stand as a memorial to how badly the people of her area had been treated. His response, “Cut it down, madam, and forget about it.”  Making good choices about the future sometimes means letting go of the past, whether good or bad. 

- Respect others – USA Today several years ago published an interesting article on the tendency toward tardiness of chief executive officers when meeting with their employees. In a nutshell, it points out that CEO’s are late for 60 percent of their meetings with subordinates. Besides a host of other problems, which are documented in the article, this shows a lack or respect for the employees.  It’s just a small example, but one that carries a big message: showing respect to our businesses and residents will reward us many times through additional motivation and lack of resentment. 

- Work Toward Your Goals – The Romans used to say “Initium dimidium facti.” If you’ve forgotten your Latin, this means, “The start is half the deed.

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- Well done is better than well said.

Benjamin Franklin US author, diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, & printer (1706 - 1790)