Happy New Year to All! It's just the second day of 2017 and I am going to work on a theme for my posts this year - Choices. I think it's a good and important theme because as we are all aware, choices have consequences. Sometimes we have immediate feedback on our choices and sometimes we feel no impact at all. I want to touch on some simple choices like exercise and dinner, but I also want to talk about broader and bigger choices like who we choose to represent us in government and some stuff in between. At the end of 2017 it would be nice if we could say to ourselves that we had made some really good choices in the past year.
Every single day we make hundreds of choices. I will try not to run down a bunch of rabbit holes that make your head swirl as I write, but instead, I want people to think about what every choice means and whether or not you can live with the consequences of those choices. What does a choice mean to you? Why are you choosing what you're choosing? Does the choice you're making bring value to your life? What would happen if you made a different choice? What would happen if you couldn't get your first choice?
Years ago I read the following: Make your decision and then live your life like you had no other choice. It's about not having regrets, or looking back. However, sometimes we make a choice that turns out badly and it's good to look back to try and figure out where we went wrong. Maybe we'll conclude that given the same set of circumstances we'd make exactly the same choice again. It never hurts to have a 'debrief'. What you want to make sure to do is learn and grow and keep moving forward.
When I was little my parents would take us over to the Columbia Swim Center in the evenings. Unlike today's Splashdown, we had a high dive to climb up and jump off. I was eight and my sister was five and we loved going off the high dive. On my way up the ladder I'd stop and let go to show off my bravery. My sister wanted to show how brave she was too - and she slipped and fell hard on to the concrete below, cracking her skull. I was a little kid of course, but I knew my sister liked to copy me. Younger siblings are doing everything they can to keep up with older siblings. I knew she'd try to do everything I did. I didn't know she'd slip and fall. She and my Mom went off to the hospital in the ambulance and my Dad followed in the car. No, they didn't leave me alone at the pool, a neighbor watched out for me while they looked after my sister. In case you're wondering, she's fine. She grew up and is having a very good life.
Okay, so while today's parents are freaking out over this story, I'll fill in some more details. Where were my Mom and Dad? Why weren't they hovering over us like today's parents making sure we didn't fall off the high dive? This was 1973 and kids were given a lot more space then. All of the parents were swimming laps or chatting at the other end of the pool. All of the kids were swimming in the deep end of the pool and jumping off the diving boards. There was a lifeguard sitting in the stand.
In 1973 Columbia was a small town. Nearly everyone we knew was on swim team, including our parents. My sister was a "Mini-Might!" - the name of the group of kids in the 5-6 yr age group. All of us went to swim practice multiple times per week and all of us were excellent swimmers. Jumping off the high dive was part of regular practice for the younger kids. We did it all the time with no incidents. My sister is athletic - she was jumping in to the pool and swimming by age two. My Mom tells a story of her standing on the edge of the pool saying "'mere Daddy" and signaling to my Dad to come over because she was jumping in. Sometimes she would say it and leap before my Dad was ready and he'd have to quickly move to her. As a Mini-Might she swam quite a distance without taking a breath. She hadn't gotten the breathing part down yet. That happens with a lot of kids.
My Dad heard my sister fall off the high dive. She didn't scream, but he heard the thunk as her head hit the pavement and he knew it was his little girl. He said he felt it in his heart. He was in the pool at the time, at the other end in a lap lane. He leaped up and ran. So did the lifeguard, my Mom and a lot of adults. It happened really quickly. As I said before, my sister had cracked her skull and had a minor concussion. She missed a day or two of school. After all of this, she still went off the high dive again. We went back to our normal routine and my Mom said "Don't let go when you climb the ladder." She didn't. At least not for a while. Neither did the rest of us for a while, because we had seen what happened. Of course as a kid there comes a time when you do it again to see if the same thing will happen. I never ever did it in front of my sister though.
My Mom and Dad made the decision that the pool, both before and after the high dive fall, was a safe place for their kids. Like all environments, and I mean all environments, it comes with hazards that you need to be aware of. Should they have stood over my sister as she climbed the ladder to the high dive? Should they have forbidden her to use the high dive even while all the other kids were using it? They made the choice that this was a one off incident. Also, they know that my sister has a bit of a daredevil gene and that they wouldn't be able to protect her from everything. On our recent trip to Hawaii she was racing down steep mountain roads at top speeds on her bike. She's jumped out of an airplane. She likes to ski fast.
All through our childhood my parents encouraged us to try stuff, physically and mentally. They didn't want us to get hurt, but they also knew that some of the stuff we did had an element of risk. They let us do it anyway. I personally think they made good choices. From swimming in the ocean, to skiing in the mountains we learned how to handle ourselves and to know when we were taking on too much risk. That's a choice our parents made for us. I'm glad they did. Different people might have made different choices and everything would have turned out just as well for them.
I think the first time my sister started up the ladder to the high dive after her fall my Mom was close by, but not right next to her. My Dad was watching from a distance. After she made it up without falling our lives went back to normal. Would it have been better if she hadn't fallen? Maybe, but maybe not. No one wants their child to get hurt ever, but they do. So, we make choices about what kids can and can't do and how much hovering we'll do as they go about their business. We put helmets on their little heads when they ski and bike. We make them wear shinguards when they play soccer and helmets and padding when they play hockey. We try to teach them funny comebacks if they get teased or bullied at school. We help them with their homework so they have a better chance at succeeding. We don't drive the car until everyone has their seatbelt on.
We make considered choices all the time about the activities kids get to pursue and there are real consequences. As we make these choices, the kids are watching and learning because they're making choices too. My sister did not stop doing stuff after she fell off the high dive. Two days after Christmas this year she climbed into a wind tunnel to do indoor sky diving and had a big grin on her face the entire time.
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