Life is a supermarket

When I was a child my mother told me "life is like a supermarket. You can put whatever you want in your shopping cart, but in the end you reach the cashier and then you have to pay for it".

What she meant by it was, that we have lots of freedom in the choices me make, and we can do (almost) anything we want, but there are consequences to our actions, and we can't escape them.

I know it sounds almost trivial, but in reality, many times we don't want to pay the price, or we live as if we're not aware of the fact that our actions – or lack of action – bear consequences.

Examples are ample:

·         Politicians who steal money and think they can get away with it to no end;

·         Publicity which promises us we can eat what we want and not gain weight thanks to some magic pills (does anyone knows what are the long-term effect of these pills?)

·         Global warming, inflated prices, constant cases of cancer, allergies, respiratory problems

All these things are related – they are the sign of a society in which people live the day like there's no tomorrow…and feeling cheated when tomorrow does arrive and with it, the bills.

I'm not here to preach, I'm in a different profession – I try to help people live in a more balanced, healthy, integrated way.

When we wake up the next day and find out the consequences, we feel fear, confusion, anger – nobody ever mentioned consequences, we were suppose to seize the day, weren't we?

Accepting that there is always a price to pay is not only embracing reality, it's also what makes us think carefully before we put something in our cart, makes us assume responsibility over our life, but it also allows us to feel mature and independent. Because I don't need to ask for permission, I don't have to be afraid of whether it's OK or not. If I have enough "money" in my pocket, I can do it.

And this is a very important point, because alongside those who fill up their cart with piles of things, there are people with the opposite problem: they're too aware of the price of things. So aware that they can't make any decision, since the price of it seems too high.

There is a lot to say about decision making, and how to make it easier, and along the next posts I'll address it from many more aspects, but here there's a very important thing to realize: NOT DECIDING IS DECIDING! And there's a price to not deciding, too.

Because as much as seeing people with huge "carts", piled up with so many products that it brings to mind metaphorical bulimic, think how sad it is to see other people, going through life with empty "carts", not daring to pick anything, choose anything, for fear of the price which might be too high for them.

To those I'd like to remind that there are very few things in life which are irreversible. I can actually think of only two: the birth of a child and death. Everything else is reversible: there is a return policy. Remembering it helps me feel I'm not trapped when I take a decision, make a choice.

How about you?

What did you put in your cart lately? How much is it costing you?

If you don't know, in the next post I'll be talking about prices.