Over the years I have had a number of grandiose ideas for novels. They usually lack a beginning, a middle or an end or, sometimes, all three. But they are ideas nonetheless, and some of them aren’t so bad.
A while back I had at least a good beginning with a novel about an amalgam of people I have known who make poor choices in life. The book was to be titled “100 Choices.”
Essentially the theory of the novel is that we are all given approximately 100 important choices to make in our lives and the number of times we make reasonably good choices will dictate the success of our lives. Assuming life to work along the lines of the Bell Curve, one could expect a fairly fulfilling life by making 50 essentially good choices. On one end, Bill Gates may have made 95 out of 100 correctly – although who knows if his billions make him happy – and perhaps Jeffrey Dahmer (and his parents) made fewer than 10 good choices during his brutal life.
This theory also requires a variant because it is important when the choices are made and how significant they may be. Melinda Gates made a good choice in who she married but this obviously differs from person to person. Michael Vick appeared to have made many good choices during his life, but he is about to nullify those good choices with his recent choice to kill and maim dogs.
While the above assumptions must be taken into account, my theory is aimed more for the average person being asked to make the average choices such as a decision to finish high school, to go to college, who to chose to be your friends, the job you choose, the mate you choose, where you live, buying real estate or not buying real estate, making a choice to drink to excess or use illegal drugs, how to spend your money, investments made, vacations taken, job changes, spousal changes, choices at moments when your integrity is on the line, deciding to work in politics instead of following your dreams, etc. I am sure there are dozens more if I am making the decision to keep thinking about this rather than send out an invoice and actually get a check faster (not sure how important that decision is).
There are also decisions that are very personal that stem from other decisions that you make. For example, I have made decisions in one or more of my businesses that have become important in other areas of my life – some good, some bad. And, of course, we always make decisions in our relationships and how we tend to them and this can amount to a good or a bad decision.
In my bad decision to not write my unwritten novel, my protagonist was going to be a person who basically was on a 0 for 100 run. Yes, the protagonist would have been based on people I know and, yes, they are still pitching a shutout. The only question remaining is, will they ever make a good choice and turn around their lives? The odds appear to be against it.
3 comments:
Interesting idea for a book AND an interesting idea to think about as it applies to each of our lives. Some of those potentially bad decisions you listed are a little close to home right now in relations to certain of my family members.
Perhaps this is too obvious but... when do you decide whether a decision is 'good' or 'bad'? Sometimes the bad decisions you make end up making you the person you become, for the better.
Thought provoking post.
Of course this post was NOT about you and I can think of very few decisions you made that were bad choices. But wouldn't it be fun to someday list what we thought were good choices in our lives and what we thought were bad? I'll bet the good choices would be overriding.
You raise a good point, though. Sometimes what seems like a bad choice could end up being a good choice and perhaps we never know this until we're on our deathbed. I guess that's just part of realizing what we have too late. Hopefully deep down we know when we have not only made good decisions, but good decisions for ourselves (not necessarily the same thing).
I don't think the theory is a one-size-fits-all thing. In fact it may have been a bad choice to write it. Crap, that ruins my average!
I agree that the choices we make in our life good or bad make us who we are today. Our life is what we make it our own creation. Sometimes we make bad choices to learn from the experience. But when all is said and done we are the sum of our own creation.
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