You Get To Choose

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"When one has not had a good father, one must create one."
Friedrich Nietzsche


One of the truisms in life is "You don't get to choose Your parents".
A question I ask of almost every person I meet is "Who is the person you most admire?" and those that respond "my father" illicit an envious smile from any of us whose fathers went 'walk about' never to return. Being a father is the most rewarding and accountable job any of us will ever hold and not doing it well or abandoning that responsibility is a character trait of only the weakest of men. With that said I humbly submit that We Do Get To Choose who will influence us in life. We get to choose who we will gravitate towards, which ideas, inspirations and interests will sway our imagination, emotions and actions. We get to form our habits and character and we create and weave this tapestry of life with the help of those we admire. There are a plethora of good parents or even just good people we can read about, learn character traits from and, in very rare cases, get to meet and become inspired by. No-one is perfect, but some people do perfect things, say perfect words and exhibit traits that influence us. Through their actions and achievements they do just enough to fill the parental void perfectly. There can be no excuse to whimper and whine away our adulthood on childhood absences - each of us has an opportunity to learn and be inspired by a cacophony of character elsewhere. You Get To Choose.

PS: Yep that is me in the middle of the picture.