CHOOSE YOUR LIFE

Trainspotting

John Hodge

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?


RENTON: I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you've got heroin?

Mark Renton in the movie TRAINSPOTTING chose not to choose but he did choose. He chose escapism rather than living in the real world.

Every day we make choices even when we don't think we are making them. We go about our lives living in automatic. We wake up, eat, shit shower, get dressed, go to work, eat lunch, have a smoke, come home, eat, drink, have sex, go to bed, and wake up the next day and do it all over again. This is the life we choose to live, and often times we are living our lives unconcously that it makes us feel trapped and weak until you learn to see that you are the designer of your life. And that you are making these choices yourself even if you don't know you are.

For instance you have a choice...go to work or go to the beach or just stay home and do nothing. But facing the reality that we have bills in life and we may want to go on vacation someday and do stuff...we choose to go to work whether we are tired, burnt out or what ever.

Choosing your life can also be overwhelming. Think about it, many of us like the idea of having the boss' salary...he gets the big bucks... but many of us don't want the responsibility of the job. Actually making conscious choices in your life takes a lot of work and when you make a bad choice there is hell to pay...well sometimes...and you can't blame the outside world for being fat, for getting fired, for getting a girl pregnant when you were planning on hitting the road with the band, for simply fucking it up. No we like to fuck up our lives and blame someone else. I landed in prison but it isn't my fault its the government, its my family, its the outside world where i lived in, its my bad neighborhood.

Most of us going around feeling tired and weak and depressed from living in automatic. But actually coming to terms with life and choosing to live consciously can be rewarding. It gives us the power to choose, it gives us the idea that we have options. "Hey I don't have to stay at this stinking job. I don't have to to stay in this stinking relationships, hey I don't have to pay this stupid bill anymore cause I'm making a choice to file bankruptcy." Feeling that you are in charge of your life makes it easier to live life sometimes. I'm choosing to go to work. No body made me be here, I am saying out loud that I choose to go to work. I choose to do my job. I choose to get through the day because that is what I'm choosing to do and no one can take that away from you or me or them.

So make an effort everyday for the most part of it to live consciously, choose to live your life the way you want no and you will begin to fee a lust for life.