Choice

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Choice

We make decisions in our everyday lives and we hope they are the right ones. When we make bad choices we have the ability to learn and grow from them. For the past few years I've made bad choices of not going to school but after transferring to West Side HS I have been on the right track to graduate. I have made several wrong decisions over the year but all in all I'm doing what I have to do for my future. In this essay we will observe pieces of literature and the choices made by the characters and their outcome.

The poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, Frost speaks about how in life you have to make many decisions. He uses a fork in the road as a metaphor to those decisions. In the poem Frost explains that he takes the side of the road less traveled by, the road was grassy and wanted wear. At the end of the poem he states "I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." In my opinion he is saying that he took a risk. Not knowing where the road would lead him, he still took a shot even if he would never come back.

In the short story Dead End by Rodulfo Anaya, Maria lives in a barrio with her siblings and her father. She has focused on education all her life. Her mother stressed the fact that to be someone in life you needed an education. When Maria's mother died, she made sure to keep her promise to finish school and go to college. In school Maria liked a guy named Frankie but he lived a fast life. Cruising in his car with the gang and smoking marijuana but Maria was not about that life. She wished she could fit in with all the other girls and just have fun but Maria was too busy with school and taking care of her little siblings. Frankie liked Maria as well and tried to make her smoke dope to calm her anxieties. Maria refused but Frankie understood. I agree with her decision because in her neighborhood all the girls end up pregnant, married or in the crack house. Maria did not want that life. She knew what was more important so she continued with her studies. After exams she would have time for fun.

The legend of La Llorana inflenced Anaya's short story by Maria saying she did not want to end up like La Llorana. Maria used La Llorana's story as an example of why she did not want to smoke the joint and why she did not want to be like the other girls. La Llorana fell in love with a handsome man quite like Frankie, but at the end all he did was leave her for another woman of higher class and left La Llorana with the children. In Maria's neighborhood you see that a lot. Girls getting impregnated at a young age and not having a future for themselves. Maria did not want that for herself so she made the better choice. In the short story envy is a big part. Maria was jealous that the other high school girls were out all night cruising and partying. Yet the other high school girls were jealous that Frankie had an attraction to Maria. He could have any girl in the school but he chose the smart girl that kept to herself.

In the The Tyranny of Choice by Barry Schwartz, they describe how you would think that people having more choices makes them happy but with options expanding it seems the proportion that said they were happy went down by 5%. More of us than ever are being diagnosed with clinical depression. Schwartz conducted research that could help explain why some people aren't happy with their choices expanding. Maximizers and satisficers. Maximizers are the ones that aim to make the very best selection and satisficers are the ones that make the choice that is "good enough" knowing that there is better out there. Maximizers do whatever they can to assure they have the very best choice from reading all labels to checking out magazines for other offers. Once a satisficer finds something at their standards, they stop looking.

In conclusion we make decisions that affect our lives everyday. Making decisions on impulse can really hurt you in the future, but if you don't make bad decisions you will never learn from wrong. As seen in Maria's short story she put much thoughts into her actions and made the right decision to go home. Other people would have smoked the joint to be cool without considering the consequences. The choice is always up to us but we have to make sure to make the right one.