Volo Ergo Sum

Every day we make deci­sions that shape our destiny.

Think about it, when we look back at the last 10 years of our lives, we would prob­a­bly see real TURNING POINTS. We have made life-changing, destiny-altering deci­sions; deci­sions that are so impor­tant that if we had made a com­pletely dif­fer­ent one, our lives would have been com­pletely dif­fer­ent. I have about a cou­ple of that.

If I had made a dif­fer­ent deci­sion, my life would not be what it is now. Not nec­es­sar­ily bet­ter, or worse, but dif­fer­ent. The pos­si­bil­ity is mind­bog­gling. And because I made the deci­sion I made, my world has changed. I would not be able to go where I would have been if I had not made the deci­sions I made; but I will also have the capac­ity to do things I would not have done if I had not made that deci­sion. The peo­ple I will meet, the things I will see, the activ­i­ties I will do, these are all shaped by choices we make today, at this very moment.

Deci­sions shape our des­tiny. Our choices mat­ter because it changes the world.

The his­tory of our world is about man or woman mak­ing life-defining deci­sions that changed the world. A Roman Emperor named Con­stan­tine dreamed about a cross and made Chris­tian­ity the offi­cial reli­gion of his Empire. A man named Abra­ham Lin­coln fought for eman­ci­pa­tion at a time when it was so unpop­u­lar. A guy named Mao Zedong stud­ied Karl Marx and Com­mu­nism and changed a coun­try and the world. A black woman named Rosa Parks just refused to stand up at the back of a bus and changed the whole civil rights move­ment. A Bishop named Jaime Car­di­nal Sin called on his coun­try­men to pro­tect a small rebel mil­i­tary force that faced the might of a dic­ta­tor. Two guys named Larry Page and Sergey Brin had this won­der­ful idea, acted on it, decided not to sell it to the giant com­pa­nies at that time and became a giant com­pany named Google. Just imag­ine a world if a guy named Howard Schultz did not fol­low his dream and cre­ated a totally new cof­feeshop con­cept named Star­bucks! I would be doing this blog in a com­pletely dif­fer­ent ambiance—I shud­der to think what posts I would have came up with. Or what if your mom chose to work in a dif­fer­ent com­pany and never met your dad? You wouldn’t be read­ing this post at all!

And every day, some­where out there, a man or a woman is mak­ing a deci­sion that will change the world. Today, the cure of can­cer is being for­mu­lated. Today, men and women are doing some­thing to save the envi­ron­ment from ulti­mate destruc­tion. Today, a man and a woman will meet in a restau­rant and decide to get mar­ried, and their child will change the des­tiny of their coun­try. Today, a man will decide to live or die and that will make a huge dif­fer­ence to his fam­ily for years to come.

Our deci­sions shape our des­tiny and the des­tiny of the world.

Volo Ergo Sum.

I choose, there­fore I am.