Everyday choices

Every day, we make choices.

Life is full of choices.  There are big-ticket decisions like where to go on vacation and everyday options like mustard or mayo.  I talk a lot about conscious choices.  I think that means more than making ethical choices about the food I eat or the cosmetics I use.  Being fully conscious means having consistency between my big-ticket choices and my everyday choices.  At least that’s the goal.

I babysat the nephs last weekend so Sis and BiL could go on a date.  The boys and I always have a good time so I was looking forward to it and even though I see them all the time now that we live together.  It was a big event night with special programming.  Neph 2 loves to play the clown which is great because we all love to laugh, but understanding ‘time and place’ is important too.  So at supper when I tell him ‘that’s enough’, after the second inappropriate mouth sound, I’m not saying anything his mom wouldn’t and hasn’t already said.  Of course you know, and as a natural comedian he knows the rule of threes; he goes for the third laugh.    Now I have to let him know I’m serious, so my vocal tone changes, there’s no cajoling.  “Okay, enough.  Why aren’t you listening? I said stop, now STOP.”  I’m not shouting but there’s a heavy emphasis at the end.  He immediately switches to the victim mode, he’s always the one getting in trouble, he’s always the one doing bad, the day always gets ruined.  Whoa! How did we get here? Apart from the fact he’s six and he makes sudden left turns in stories as a general rule, this is a zero to sixty maneuver on par with the finest german engineering.

I corrected him, breaking things down very clearly.  He chose not to listen the first and second times I told him to stop.  He chose to act up a third time.  We’d been having a good time and I still wanted to have a good time, we had a game planned for after supper where our team would kick his brother’s butt.  Now he had a choice, he could choose to sulk and be cranky for the rest of the evening – what he currently had on the table – or we could move on and keep having a good time after supper.  Happily he chose wisely and we had a great night although the game couldn’t be completed – winner still tbd.

The next day I twice made wrong turns that put me on the freeway going in the wrong direction (true story not just symbolic).  In one case I didn’t even want to be on the freeway.  There was a lot of cussing and vilifying of those in charge of placing Toronto’s road signs.  I caught myself the second time and laughed at my off the chart reaction to a minor detour. Why did I choose to elevate my blood pressure over that?  Yeah I was tired and I wanted to get where I was going but was the ballistic behaviour necessary?  Sure I’m susceptible to road rage, which mostly stays confined within the car, but most of these spontaneously combustible reactions are just habits.  Bad habits that have gone unchecked for oh so long.  Some say that breaking certain behavioural habits takes half the time it took to create the habit.  Yeesh, twenty years to overcome my road rage?  One drive at a time.

I hope I’ve got Neph 2 started early enough.  I’m sure we’ll repeat that lesson a few more times, but even if it takes twice as long he’ll be pretty conscious by twelve – just in time for all the hormones to wreak havoc.