BECAUSE WE CHOOSE TO

Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to run two different Spartan Races and earn the 2024 Trifecta medal that Spartan offers. This medal is earned by completing each of the three races they host: the Beast (21 kilometers), the Super (10 kilometers), and the Sprint (5 kilometers). Achieving this was one of my major goals for the year, and I feel proud to have accomplished it.

While I was running the 10-kilometer race, something unusual kept running through my mind. I repeatedly thought about a scene from the movie The Matrix: Revolutions. Admittedly, this is strange, but I’m also someone obsessed with movies. Towards the end of the film, the antagonist seems to be winning and says to the protagonist, “You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can’t win. It’s pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?” The protagonist simply responds, “Because I choose to.”

This is just a simple line from a movie, yet it played in my head over and over as I ran. It gave me motivation. I imagined the people I passed asking, “Why are you still running? How are you still running?” In my head, I responded, “Because I choose to.”

What makes any of us keep going? Why do we choose to better ourselves in any aspect of our lives? It’s simply because we choose to.

There’s a quote from the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre: “Man is condemned to be free because, once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” I really like this quote because it reminds me of my own responsibility—the responsibility to live deliberately, to live intentionally. Every day, I make choices about how to live my life. These choices can be as small as deciding what to wear or what to eat, or as significant as deciding to earn the Spartan Trifecta medal. But every choice has a consequence. These consequences can be good or bad, large or small, but they exist nonetheless.

There’s a tendency to blame our situation on external factors, and, granted, external factors do affect us. But people tend to blame these factors more than their own choices. I’m not necessarily talking about the choices that led us into these situations, but the choices we make once we’re in them.

We’ve all heard the Charles R. Swindoll quote, “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react.” I couldn’t agree more. Life is going to throw curveballs, yellow and red lights, and roadblocks our way. Instead of letting these challenges control you, take charge of your life by making intentional choices.

I believe all of my blog posts so far have discussed living intentionally, and that’s because I think it’s one of the most important things you can do. Life will pass by in the blink of an eye. We are stardust in the cosmos. So, live the life you want to live, and do that by taking control of your choices and understanding your responsibility in them. We challenge ourselves, we stay restless, and we take control of our life’s trajectory because we choose to.

Stay Restless,

Jordan Osborne