Barring extreme physical and mental disabilities, each and every one of us is where we are today -- be it poor or wealthy, happy or sad, on the streets or in a condo, in a Mercedes or a rusted-out Pinto -- because of the choices we have made during our lives. It's the choices we have made that put us where we are, not the choices others have made for us.
People of poor character tend to blame their choices on circumstances. Ethical people make good choices regardless of circumstances. If they make enough good choices, they begin to create better conditions for themselves.
People who do not see their choices do not believe they have choices. They tend to respond automatically, blindly influenced by their circumstances and conditioning. Mindfulness, by helping us notice our impulses before we act, gives us the opportunity to decide whether to act and how to act.
The choices that we make through our lives, the people who intersect us on our path kind of change what our fated destiny is. So some of us are lucky enough for the choices that we make to keep us on our path.
I look upon ourselves as partners in all of this, and that each of us contributes and does what he can do best. And so I see not a top rung and a bottom rung - I see all this horizontally - and I see this as part of a matrix. And I see every human being as having a purpose, a destiny, if you like - the destiny that exists in each of us - and find ways and means to provide such opportunities for everyone.
Energy use, transportation options, food choices, water use, purchasing choices, participating in elections, volunteering for nonprofits . . . and within each of these categories, each of us can learn to live a more conscious life.
At times, our circumstances call for us to make critical choices to keep our covenants or to compromise them. Covenants should never be compromised, even when at the moment some circumstances might seem to justify it.
No one's born with their destiny stamped on their forehead ... we make the choices to fulfill our destiny.
What we look for when we need to find someone who can fit in with our music, the vocals and the harmonies and the way they blend are very important to us because if you listen to Beach Boys music, the harmonies, not only are the notes being sung, but there's a blend to it. The voices have to blend.
Choices, the greatest power we have, Choices, the path which is destiny, Choices, the result which is you... .
Men speak of blind destiny, a thing without scheme or purpose. But what sort of destiny is that? Each act in this world from which there can be no turning back has before it another, and it another yet. In a vast endless net. Men imagine that the choices before them are theirs to make. But we are free to act only upon what is given. Choice is lost in the maze of generations and each act in the maze is itself an enslavement for it voids every alternative and binds one ever more tightly into the constraints that make a life.
The mystery of human destiny is that we are fated, but that we have the freedom to fulfill or not fulfill our fate: realization of our fated destiny depends on us. While inhuman beings like the cockroach realize the entire cycle without going astray because they make no choices.
We all have them, those parts of us that are the greatest parts of us and the worst parts of us. Sometimes we're put in circumstances and bad choices are made.
Each of us is like a diamond, and each of us has the potential to be brilliant.
For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life; in this way, not to evade destiny, as the ordinary people try to do, but to fulfil it in its true potential - the imagination.
Your children's genes reflect only their potential, not their destiny. It is up to you to provide the environment that allows them to develop to their highest potential.