What Drives Our Choices at The Crossroads in Life? What drives your choices when you think of being at a crossroads and having to make a significant decision? What are the filters that you run a decision or choice through? Some people can make snap decisions. In contrast, others will contemplate the many outcomes and often find themselves incapacitated, making a slow decision or even no decision. By the way, making no decision is actually the decision. Today our country is at a crossroads in many aspects. Let’s explore what I believe are two particularly hard to ignore reasons behind choices when a person is at a crossroads. Two factors exist that most don’t completely understand or might not ever had hear of, much less referenced. However, you have likely read or heard something that referenced “the choice between good and evil.” It’s even used an example with the definition of the word choice. Although this sounds straightforward, I’d like to share that it can often be altered by one of two filters for choices that I will cover in this piece. We’re going to discover how one topic that can divide a family, the church, or even a country could be altered with two filters that are hard to ignore once you’ve thought of any decision this way. A while back, I read one of those cute little signs that folks hang on a wall outside or on a special place for funny or even philosophical words of wisdom. It read, “To become old and wise, you must first be young and stupid.” Interesting, really. I want you to think about Life Stage vs. Life Age. Read it again if you need to because these are the two filters that I’m going to evaluate which could alter someone’s choices at a crossroad decision. I want you to keep in mind that these samples I’ll discuss are NOT my actual opinions in most cases. They are merely suggestions of how we might view someone else’s choice with civility and understanding. I’m not suggesting you agree or change your mind. I’m suggesting that we make decisions daily and are often driven by life stage or life age. Let’s take something simple like the excessive speed at which someone drives through my neighborhood. There is a life age that this absent-minded teen could have been me. Yet, at the life stage when my children were small and could have quickly darted out into the street to get a ball or runaway
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skateboard, I was appalled at these kids speeding through our quiet little neighborhood. Stay with me for a few minutes to fifteen years later. Now, an officer stops one of my children to reinforce the memory of the speed limit in our neighborhood. He shares the danger of driving even five miles an hour over the speed limit with children playing near the streets. America is at a crossroads on many issues. Some have been debated for years, while others are just recycled concerns with a new twist. For example, I don’t remember being concerned about the benefits offered at a job I had when I was in my early 20’s—a thought driven by my life age. Yet, today, with some previous issues and health scares, the benefits I have available to me are examined closely because of my life stage. On some of the concerns that I’ll pose in this story, keep in mind the age of our country’s population. What age group is growing the fastest, and what is the minority of age groups? I believe you’ll see some cycles in our decisions that have surfaced and been debated before. When you consider the great debate over Roe V Wade, it’s important to remember that some faiths believe life begins at conception while others believe life begins at birth. I have a friend who is strongly opposed to abortion today. Most people don’t know that at one point in her life (at a very young, unmarried -life age) she chose to discontinue a pregnancy. Now, with her multiple children, she is adamantly opposed and says once she understood (life stage) and had a family, it was crystal clear to her what was right. While many are raised in homes where this is discussed and are taught the consequences of abortion versus adoption, there are still those who don’t have this faith-built upbringing. This is not my debate. If you look closely at many of these crossroad decisions made, I’m attempting to share that they are often driven by the largest groups in a particular life stage or age group. It isn’t always the same, but it can be. As an older mother when my son was born, I found myself carpooling, going to school events, and socializing with many moms younger than I was. It never really crossed my mind that we wouldn’t be lifelong friends. I found that although these were special relationships, they were driven by the life stage that often put us
