Life is sometimes about making easy or hard choices.

There is an old saying, if a person is hungry, you can give him food or you can teach her to catch the food and cook it. If you give the person the food, you solve the immediate problem, which is to take care of the hunger. If you teach the person to catch the food, i.e. catch a fish, you have taken care of the long-term problem. So, let's say you live by a great, abundant, life-giving ocean, though at a very primitive time in history, and you are very, very hungry. And let's further say, that you're given a choice: a wading pond full of fish or fishing lessons; enough fish to last you for several weeks, or the skills to tap an unlimited supply. Which would you choose? 


The answer is not as easy as it may appear, if you are starving, you may choose the wading pond full of fish as it important to you that you and your loved ones survive. However, if you are just hungry and not starving and near death, you may choose the fishing lessons.


Ah-ha, so it is not an easy choice, but life is sometimes about making easy or hard choices.


What if learning to fish meant multiple solo attempts to test out your new skills, without any guidance and help that you could see? My thought would be that while you were learning this important and life-changing skill, you'd likely feel anxious, uncertain, and a little confused? While you were learning, you don’t realize that your instructor would never be far, watching over you like a mother does a young child, but giving you the freedom to make your own mistakes and make the skill truly yours. Would you sometimes feel all alone and given the chance to remake the choice would you still choose the lessons? 


I know what I would do, and have done in those circumstances. What have you done, and how can you help your children and grandchildren to make the same choices you made, or perhaps make different choices than you made?