Gifts and choices

Cleverness is a gift, kindness is a choice. Gifts are easy -- they're given after all. Choices can be hard. You can seduce yourself with your gifts if you're not careful, and if you do, it'll probably be to the detriment of your choices. Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon.com

Jeff Bezos speaking at this year's Princeton graduation told the story of a car journey with his grandparents and what happened when he said something smart but not sensitive about his grandmother's smoking. Pulled aside by his grandfather he was give a simple wisdom. "Jeff, one day you'll understand that it's harder to be kind than clever."

Bezos gave up a good job in a financial firm to found Amazon and he admitted ... "it really was a difficult choice, but ultimately, I decided I had to give it a shot. I didn't think I'd regret trying and failing. And I suspected I would always be haunted by a decision to not try at all."

I'm challenged by what Bezos says and by the strange connections he makes. He doesn't major on the kindness as a choice but the deeper key of choices. Being kind for him is not a gift but a choice, perhaps because being kind involves choices about the things you have and have been given. For a good part of my life I have been taking the path of least resistance or at least desiring that. Now I find perhaps rather than going with the flow I need to step out even more in faith, having the courage of my convictions. Bezos claims "We are the choices we make." I'm beginning to think he is right. My choice to leave the civil service quit a secure job, my choice to leave the UK, my choice leave friends and family behind has made me who I am here and now.

I'm living through a time in my life where I'm forced not to go with the flow but to make clear and deliberate decisions about my attitudes and values, about my health and lifestyle, about the very core of who I am, my identity. These choices will shape who I am in the future, for better or worse. I am not what I have, nor what I do but the choices I make. Perhaps to love perhaps the care or to be kind.