I was giving a lot of thought last night to the concept of choice. My wife used to say all the time that you always have a choice. I don't think I really believed her then, but I do now. The paths we trod may not be the ones we would have selected (given a choice) because there are an infinite number of possibilities, and somehow, for the simple sake of survival I suppose, the number and kind of paths available at any one time are possible because of things both within and beyond our control. They are there because of what we have done and because of what we believe, and because of what simple realities we face. In my case, my choices are limited not only by past choices, but by what I have come to expect of myself. But we are always walking or running down one path or another. The only given is that we cannot choose not to choose. Our perception of time forces us always to move ahead on one path or another. The frightening thing is that we can see the connections if we look. I see the things that have happened in my life and how they now have influenced the options available to me. Oh, I tend to say that I have few options, but that is not true. it's just that some of the options are obvious non-starters because of what I expect of myself and because I do know that no matter where you go, there you are, and that who you are with is more important than where you are. Being the Existentialist that I am, I know that I have made myself what I am, given what I had to work with. And from my current perspective as a Monday-morning-quarterback I can see how some of my choices were probably bad choices. But they were made, and there's no going back.