Choose Your Own Adventure
No matter where you started, you can end up where you want.
Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure series you read as a kid? After a bit of character development and plot set up, the reader encounters a problem and is left to choose the next step of the story. Choose well and you get more chapters and possibly a happy ending. Choose poorly and your hero meets an untimely death by sci-fi monster. My favorite part of those gamebooks was that I could page-flip and read all the possible endings, discovering the many ways the author imagined me to die and how I would otherwise live in the end.
One Life, Live it Right
While billions still hold tightly to the illusion of reincarnation, the truth is we only get one go at this thing called life. The old “what do you want to be when you grow up” question is a throwback to a time when children were raised to adulthood in a single context, built careers in a single office to retire with a company pension. But in the 2020s my individualistic culture has gifted me with the free agency to craft whatever life I desire to live out. A few dozen trips around the sun can be spent in any number of ways, from a myriad of starting points.
If you boil it all down to basic elements, I want three things out of life:
First and foremost I want to live an honorable life. My obituary ought to say something about me being an amazing father that deeply cared for his children and expressed it in ways they felt to the bottom of their hearts. It should indicate that I faithfully loved my wife and daily sought ways to bring out the best in her. That I was the best friend a guy could have. A man of character who wouldn’t compromise yet always extended grace to others. That I maintained a love for God more intense than the desire for pleasure or any other created thing. I hope people will see an example of character and kindness that can be followed. When they speak of Brent Earwicker, let them say he loved his God and he loved his people. Not a perfect track record, but an honorable legacy.
Secondly, I want a fulfilling life. Who cares if I either sacrificed for honor or indulged in pleasure while it didn’t count for anything? Either way, I could gain the world and lose my soul. But I get confused on this one a lot. My personality is so bent towards successful productivity that I often meld the idea of purpose with mere output. I can feel just as purposeful in getting a social post online as I do in healing a sick person — both check a box on my ever-expanding list. But as a Christian, my priority is clearly spelled out: Make Disciples of the Nations. It’s not some robotic mantra that I repeat like the Buddhist children I heard chanting mindlessly in the mountains of Nepal. I want everything I do to be aimed towards blessing the existence of others, right here and now, and especially for eternity.
Third, I want a long life. I know I could squeeze a few extra years out of this body through wise lifestyle choices. But research on the brain shows that you can increase the perceived length of your life through new, quality, and often risky experiences. Ask your grandmother to tell you stories from her life and she will likely bring up her teenage and young adult years. In this active span of years when we are all changing and growing, experiencing new things, seeing the world in a new way, the memory moves in slow motion. Those new exciting moments are captured forever in vivid detail while the decades spent in your office chair meld into a single memory. My tired adult body craves routine and stability, but counting my days left causes me to think outside the bounds of a typical American Dream towards a more adventurous one.
You Decide
You’re at the edge of a great decision. What you choose will determine all your days to come. Without pages to pre-read, and a wide-open ending, how can you be sure you’ll get to the end with a legacy intact? Don’t fear, but grab what you have come to love and swing out over that ledge. This is, after all, the story of your life. Live it well, friend.
