Growing up I heard a lot, “Well, that’s the decision you made. You have to deal with the consequences of those decisions.” I hated hearing it. Almost as much as, “Life’s not fair.” Thankfully, I’ve been able to turn that back on my offenders (love you mom and dad!). As an almost 30 year old adult I’ve done what a lot of other people do as they get older. I appreciate what my parents were instilling in me. It’s been my observation that this appreciation doesn’t really kick in until at least your mid-twenties. I find that most people are not the sharpest tools in the shed until 25 or so. Until then, you get a lot of leeway.

We are our choices. We each have to take responsibility for those choices. The longer I am pregnant I’ve noticed that my patience for people dwindles more and more. I’ve never been that patient of a person when it comes to doing things in life. If I know a big event is coming I want it to come faster. If I have a to do list I’m working on I want to be done each task as quickly as possible. Running errands drives me up a wall because traffic isn’t fast enough, lines aren’t short enough, and my legs don’t move as quickly as I would like. I have a ton of patience when it comes to kids which I’m hoping pays it’s dividends. I have a good amount of patience with people. I know everyone moves at their own pace and that we all have a past that affects us today.

For me that older I get, the more pregnant I get, and the more life I live I find myself running short on patience. When talking with friends or family about a frustration I am having with someone I say, “That was their choice! I want to shake them and say, ‘You made that choice! You chose to do these actions. Take the consequences that go with that!'” I’ve developed my own philosophy that at the end of the day, we’re all adults. Especially for my age group and up. We’ve had decades on this Earth. We’ve had family, friends, loves lost, loves gained, successes, and failures. You’re whole life is a trial and error. What you do with that error defines who you are. It defines who you are because it’s how you deal with the choice you made.

I am by no means a saint. I have trouble following my own philosophy. When something goes wrong in my life I desperately search for the person I can blame for my lot in life. Sometimes there is someone to blame. However, I can’t choose to blame that person and expect all my troubles to disappear into oblivion. It took me forever to understand fully that you can’t control what other people do but you can control how you react to that person and situation. Something I wish I had understood when I was a teen and in my early twenties. It would have saved a lot of tears and a lot of hurtful conversations that weren’t needed.

As a housewife I think I’ve had to grasp this philosophy more so than when I was working in corporate America. A housewife without kids is a very individualistic job. It’s all on me and most of the time I am by myself. If I didn’t accomplish something that day I have to figure out what choice I made that day that was or wasn’t the best choice. Sometimes a lot of bad little choices lead me to making a big choice of doing something good. It’s the self motivated choices that are the most difficult. I am sure this will carry over once I become a parent. Especially for the first few years of my daughter’s life. It will 100% be on me and Tim to show her what this life thing is about. What is right, what is wrong, and how to navigate through the grey areas. That’s our responsibility though because it was a choice that we made to have our daughter.

Of course not all choices we make are so dire. What you have for dinner tonight. Whether to watch Parks & Rec or The Office on Netflix tonight. To wear the crimson long sleeved shirt or the sea glass blue long sleeved shirt today. These choices are made on a daily basis but won’t impact your life. Until you realize that you’ve decided to have a large big mac meal for the fourth night in a row. That you should be reading or going to the gym instead of watching hours of Netflix again. That the crimson shirt is actually a little too see through and you are giving a presentation that day. All our choices added up together make bigger choices for us. They lead to decisions that we have to make about our life. It’s easy to read blogs and articles about how to improve our life but putting those choices into motion are a little more difficult.

Choices choices. We get them from a very young age. Picking out the perfect sticker for getting a shot. What toy to play with for the next 30 seconds. Milk, juice, water, what’s your poison for the chicken nuggets and tater tots on your plate? The older we get the more we understand how these choices intertwine into the other parts of our lives. Maybe not the milk, juice or water thing but you get the jist. Should we become panicked over every little choice we make? Of course not. We make hundreds of choices each day. Going over each one with a fine toothed comb is maddening. As long as you understand that in the big picture you are the choices you make and take responsibility for them, then I think you’ll be just fine.