This I Believe | Teen Ink

This I Believe

May 26, 2017
By Anonymous

There are so many different beliefs in the world. The earth is round. God is real. Water is wet, and dirt is dirty. Up is up and down is down. I believe all of these, to me they are good and true, but out of all of these one sticks out. That decisions determine destiny. What I mean by this, is that everything we do, everything we say, and every which way we treat people as a consequence that affects not just our lives, but everyone's life around you. 100% of people make decisions every single day about everything little thing so you can imagine the scale of this belief.
     

All decisions have consequences. That is something we learned from a young age. Touch a hot stove and you will get burnt. Don’t do work for a class and you will fail. Lose a paper in a class and you'll probably fail the binder check. These are all short terms effects, immediate or almost immediate. However our decisions are not only about the short term, they often have long permanent effects. Like the idea of time travel, go back in time and step on a butterfly and change some significant moment throughout time because you killed all of that one butterflies descendants and grandchildren and great grandchildren etc. i mean by this that our decisions are long term, like smoking. Now it doesn't kill you but lung cancer later on will. Or like a tattoo, one short session and you have a permanent marking. Life is full of decisions both short and long term.


Our decisions do not only affect us, often times they effect everyone around us as well. Like for instance, a conversation along the lines of “hey i bet you can make that jump” lead to a summer of one handed shenanigans and a pretty big scar. But this didn’t affect only me, my family had to deal with my brokenness, they had to help me get dress and pick up the slack where i couldn’t work. They had to do things they didn’t want to because i couldn't do what we all wanted to. Like politicians, their decisions affect entire countries because its what they feel is the best and sometimes it's not but their decision affected an entire populations. And this is the belief, that our destiny is determined by everyone's decisions not just our own.


Be careful of how act and what you choose to do, because life doesn't give second chances. One decision to drink and drive can leads to countless broken heart and broken bodies. One divorcing set of parents leads a cousin who was so bright and full of energy down a dark path of arrests, drugs, anger and depression. Be careful of how you act because you never know what great great grandkid of that butterfly you stepped on, the one that would cure cancer, you didn't know you stepped on him because all you saw was the mother. Our decisions determine destiny, and not just ours, but everyone's around us and they them. Every person you interact changes who you are and what you’re gonna do. Decisions determine destiny. This I believe.


The author's comments:

This is what I believe


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