WE CHOOSE OUR OWN FUTURES

It's not easy writing on a tiny PDA keyboard. I have no choice tonight though -- my DSL service has once again disappeared.

But I need to write about something I've been thinking about all day. I've been thinking that too many of us allow current circumstance to set the course for the future. If you think about the futility of that mindset you'd surely agree that it's self defeating.

I recall a Summer job I had in a sawmill in Central New Hampshire in my teens. The mill was in a tiny Hamlet far from the highways and cities to the south. The workers there all lived in Town. None but one had ever left their village. And Old Tom, the sole adventurer of the lot, had ventured "out" but once; he had fled back to the certainty of the Hamlet within a week.

No one in that town had ever attended High School. Only mill and factory work kept food on their tables.

Now I have always believed that there is nobility in all forms of work. But to a man these kind folks told me that they weren't good enough or smart enough for what they called "out there."

They were good enough to be whatever they were willing to make of themselves, yet they anchored themselves to their current limits through a self defeating mindset.

About 10 years later I visited that same area to see how things were going for the Hamlet. It wasn't pretty. The mill was gone, burned to the ground with only its chimney and concrete loading dock left. The town's factory was boarded up, as were most of the little houses around town.

A crippling mindset had cost these fine folk dearly.

Let us all choose to be the Captains of our own futures. Allowing current circumstance to set our course is as immobilizing as choosing indecision as one's method of making decisions.

See the future you want and work to make it happen.