Decisions

Last summer, an enormous ripple was set into play when LeBron James made "The Decision" public.  He made a big spectacle of his choice to move to another basketball team.  The ripple was immediate and huge. The decision to switch teams, in itself, was a no-brainer in my opinion.  He wants to win an NBA championship.  The chances he'd do it with his previous team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, were slim. In order to achieve his personal sports goals, he had to make a decision. He decided to 'take his talents' to the Miami Heat.  Here's where the ripples diverge.

On the one hand, you have a man who needs to decide what to do career-wise.  Just like any other bread-winner, a lot of factors go into such a choice.  What would be best for his family?  What would be best for him personally? What would he leave behind? The choice he makes here would ripple throughout his family's lives for the duration of them. In this case, at least on paper, he chose well.

On the other hand, you have a superb athlete with aspirations of super-stardom. He sees that sports give him a relatively short window in which to achieve championship level play. LeBron wants to see his name listed among the greats of this game.  He wants championship rings on several fingers.  His skills fully support that thinking; his team's capabilities did not. This decision also rings true, on paper.

LeBron the man, for all I know, is loving life in Miami.  Hopefully his family is too.  I have no idea of the financial particulars of his new contract but I'm sure his family is being very well provided for. "The Decision", at least in this direction, has started a series of ripples that make sense for them all.

LeBron the basketball superstar, however, is still, one year later, recovering from the ripples he put into play with  "The Decision".  With his choice to broadcast his career move on live television, he turned many a sports fan away.  His shameless self-promotion started a flood of ripples outward that quickly reversed and swamped him.  His now former team felt betrayed. The way the Cavaliers played in the wake of LeBron's 'defection' certainly reflects that ripple.  His home city and state also felt let down...everything from burning his jersey in the street to achieving new heights of creativity with anti-LeBron signs when the Heat visited Cleveland reflects that ripple. A man previously admired not only for his basketball skills but for his personality and on-screen presence was shocked to find himself hated. That last ripple had to be a hard one to swallow.

"The Decision" = Diverse and Widespread Ripples; not all of them positive.

We all make decisions, from the miniscule to the all-encompassing, every second we're awake.  From what to have for breakfast all the way on up to deciding if our country needs to go to war, we are deciding. Choosing. Opting. And rippling.  "If I have a donut for breakfast, the ripples will be..."  "If I don't save enough money to retire, the ripples will be..." "If I engage our country in war, the ripples will be..."

The key here, of course, is in the awareness.  To some degree, the ripple can be controlled, if you make a decision with awareness and thought.  "A donut will make me sleepy and starving by 9:15...not to mention chubby...not a good option...not a good ripple."  And so on.

To take it further though, and certainly more importantly, how will the decisions we make impact others?

There are some ripples that simply can't be predicted.  When you make a decision, sometimes there are miserable ripples set into motion, one that you didn't want or anticipate. Ripples that can cause pain.  I'm sure LeBron was completely blindsided by the backlash from "The Decision". I am pretty sure that he didn't intend to infuriate and ostracize his fans.  As the ripples have faded some, he's recovered some ground. It's been over a year now.  Just look how far the impact of that ripple has traveled.

All of us have made decisions, choices, that have rippled poorly, whether on us or on those we love. Whether the choices have been naive, negligent or just plain stupid, it happens and it sucks.  It's a part of life to learn and grow by falling down and getting back up again; by making mistakes and hopefully learning not to repeat them.  The pain we feel or that we unintentionally subject others to is hard to accept.

But we can go forward, by starting our own new ripple.  If we've made poor decisions, ones that have caused pain, we can vow to avoid those mistakes going forward.  If we've been impacted by the ripple of someone else's poor decisions, we can also find a way to send out our own ripple.  We can start a fresh line of thinking, one that's focused and positive.  We can control how we act and react so we don't perpetuate an inadvertently negative ripple.  We can start our own flow of positivity, create our own ripple of thoughtful awareness, so that we know in our hearts that we aren't intentionally swamping anyone with the effects of careless actions or negative thoughts.  

We can decide.