I don’t know how often I’ve heard mothers call after their departing children in that apron-stringy sing-song reserved for maternal advice: “Make good choices, hon.”
I don’t know whether Diane Ford ever called that out to young Robbie as he rolled out the door at the start of another day. If she did, he’s obviously forgotten and today as Toronto’s mayor — and theatre in the round — he might be wishing he hadn’t.
He has indicated pretty clearly that he made some bad lifestyle choices — but he calls them “mistakes,” which is meant to persuade us that his heart really wasn’t in them and that he was hammered at the time so it wasn’t really his fault at all, eh?
Ryder Hesjedal gave the same accident-sounding account of his past doping: “I chose the wrong path,” he said. Well, professional racing cyclists do tend to look down at the road a lot and might miss a path that they’re pedalling by, especially a straight and narrow one.
The unlucky three expelled from the Senate last week have been protesting that they were following the rules and that if they made wrong choices, no one told them until their expense chits hit the fan.
José Mourinho, the Chelsea football club’s manager, was more honest after Newcastle’s win last week: “I made 11 wrong choices,” he said of the players he fielded.
Important choices that must be made are more than those between fries and a salad. Making bad choices or wrong turns or bad decisions can cause regret that we carry with us to the grave.
If it’s any comfort, regret for bad decisions is all in your head: It messes up the medial orbitofrontal region, the anterior cingulate cortex and hippo-campus of your brain, which can be pretty stressful.
At the moment of choice, consequences can be brushed aside. The desire for immediate gratification can allow the indulgence of weakness, the relaxation of moral muscle.
There are some choices that are made for us; some that are particularly difficult. Some people are born with silver spoons in their mouths; some born into distress have no need for any utensil because they have little to eat.
Marriages are still being arranged in parts of the world. Many, arranged or not, fall apart. Recently, we have been made aware that some born of one sex might want to choose another.
People are born unequal in every way. To improve their lot, they must make choices that might, in the end, turn out to be good or bad. They make their own fortunes and lose them.
As Jean-Paul Sartre has reminded us, we are our choices. I would add: however modest they are.
I’m here today in my comfortable back-eddy because I chose not to accept an invitation by a refugee group to parachute into Vietnam after the Americans skedaddled. I’m here because I chose not to work for Armand Hammer, who took a shine to me at an embassy reception long ago.
I’ve made some bad choices that I won’t go into at this time, except to say that they didn’t put me in prison. But I won’t claim they were mistakes or the result of carelessness or inattention.
Like those of any mayor or senator or professional athlete, my bad choices were deliberate, even if easy to make because of confidence — often misplaced — that no one would find out or care if they did.
I think that rogues get away with excusing their conduct and appealing for “understanding” these days, because too much blame is being put on inherited disadvantages, adverse conditions and daunting challenges.
These sorts of things have come to be considered by our courts in passing sentences. Punishments need not fit crimes, but respect sensibilities.
Our young are over-swaddled and over-coddled. They aren’t being taught how to stand up for themselves. They’re not taught the value of effort.
They enter adulthood untried and untroubled. They assume that whatever they can get away with is fair game and “mistakes” can be forgiven.
When they come to a fork in the road they consider right and left, not right and wrong.
