So Take Your Choice – Sunday, September 30, 1956
In these days of increasing complexity as more and more of many things are offered, paradoxically it becomes more and more apparent that our choices in life are limited.
With a limited amount of money, we can’t buy everything. With a limited amount of time, we can’t be everything. Much as we wish it were otherwise, whenever we decide to do one thing, we decide, in fact, not to do other things.
When we choose to read some things, we are, in a measure, unable to read others. When we choose one type of entertainment, we must, in a measure, miss others. If a man has more than one talent, he is constantly faced with a decision as to which talent he wants to give his time to.
When lack of talent doesn’t limit his choice, lack of time does. No man can know all there is to know, not even in one profession—and perhaps not even in one part of one profession. Everything takes time. Even active friendship takes time; and when we choose to spend a day with some people, we don’t spend it with others. Some men can do more things than others.
Some men can be more things than others. Some men don’t have to narrow their choices as much as others do. But even people of greatest capacity are limited as to how much they can get around and how many lives they can touch on intimate terms, and no man can be all things to all people—not even to himself. We can’t be acceptable in all circles, in all kinds of company.
At every instance we have to make a choice. Any profession we pick, any life we choose, any friends we favor, all mean some giving up of other things. We can’t play the whole field. We can’t have the whole world. This is one of life’s great lessons, and it is a momentous matter, this deciding of what we want to be, and being prepared to pay the price of being it—for there is no such thing as success for the man who casts himself in all characters.
In the limitless everlasting life ahead, there may be time and opportunity to be everything worthwhile that we want to be, but here and now, we have to take our choice. And learning to make intelligent choices is one of the greatest lessons of life. *
*Revised.
September 30, 1956
Broadcast Number 1,415