Today’s Wisdom: “Life is about choices. Some we regret, some we’re proud of. Some will haunt us forever. The message: we are what we chose to be.”– Graham Brown
By Bill D. Ward
I just heard a new term the other day. Someone was noting that death eternalizes one’s choices.
I had never thought about eternalized choices before but the idea seems to hold credence for me. As long as we are alive, we have the ability to say, “Oops, my bad.” We can fix bad decisions. We can change our opinions. We can mend broken relationships. We can ask forgiveness.
At the moment of our departure, however, all our decisions and choices through a lifetime are locked in, never to be undone. At that point we own them forever.
The concept of eternalizing our choices rattled me a bit. All of us have had our moments in life where we made bad choices. How many of those are still written in our book of life, unfixed?
At the risk of taking on a topic that may be outside my typical ramblings on things learned, I share from another data base in my brain. Having researched and written three books on life beyond our earthly time, reports suggest that everyone goes through a life review in the moments after our passing. This is usually done in the presence of others who occupy the next realm of existence. (There are literally hundreds of books and websites on life following death. You can easily check them out.)
That review covers every moment of our lives, all displayed in a manner of seconds. All the good, all the bad, all the drama and all the trauma is there. We get to see it, but we don’t get to fix it. At that point it is eternalized forever. From then on all we can do is lament our choices, or take pride in them.
One of the things I have learned is that I really don’t like carrying around regret. It gnaws at me, keeps poking at me and steals my peace. On earth, time seems to be a healer, at least a little bit. In the next realm, I don’t know. What if regret isn’t healed by time.
So enough of these foreboding thoughts. If you are reading this today, your life has not yet been eternalized. You have time. I’m just sayin’.
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