She was all teary eyed when she finished the book while sitting at the corner table with the book still in her hand at her favorite library. The book was all about a man who was kidnapped when he was a child and later adopted by a rich family thousands of miles away from his original family. Somehow, he was lucky enough to find his way back to his family after some years. No doubt the family who adopted him was rich and that improved his and his original family’s life. Still, this story left her teary eyed not with tears of happiness but with tears of sadness. The only question occupied her mind was that what if the man was not successful to find his original family or what if the choices which were made on our behalf by others when we were very young to understand were wrong according to our believes?
She thought that the ‘what ifs’ in our life are always left unanswered, the man in the book has almost all the answers to the ‘what ifs’ in his life. That is not the case in real life. We are always left behind to wonder what would have happened if we had selected this option instead of that or if we had chosen some other career option. It is hard to imagine the consequences of the choices when we actually have to choose from two options but when we have made one choice and somehow that does not end up well then we are compelled to think about the results that would have erupted from the other option, even though there was no guarantee of the success of the other option itself.
Moreover, thinking back when we were young enough that others decided for us, what was the guarantee that what they thought was beneficial for us, was actually what we want now? It is complicated to think that during those days if we were allowed to make choices then our choice would have been good compared to theirs. As such in the book there was a person who decided that the child’s future would be better with other family than his family. But the child at that point thought that he wanted joy with his family rather than the richness. He was confused about how he would have felt about it now when he grew up and got hold of his history. This confusion would have stayed adamantly on his mind even if he would have grown up with his family and thought about the probability of the other option.
She thought about the probability of how her life would have been based on the other options she had and she recalled a quote from the author Catherine Pulsifer, “And in life, it is all about the choice we make. And how the direction of our lives comes down to the choices we choose.” Ultimately it is all about the choices we make and so it was useless to think negatively about this choice and this life. With that, a smile came her face and she stood up to choose another book to read, that would probably make her feel happy.
(The book – The Orphan Keeper by Camron Wright)
Reading Love 