It's choice not chance that determines your destiny.

Before I came to Scotland everyone was telling me about how Scotland would change my ideas on life. That it would change me as a Human Being. I have only been here for twenty eight days, so I can't completely say for sure it hasn't or has. All I can say is that yes it is effecting me. It is making me think twice about things I did naturally for the simple reason I do not wish to offend anyone. However, my worldview, my ideas on life, have all stayed in tact and if anything coming to Scotland has helped me to support them even more.

While I was in the Highlands I went to the Firth of Moray. It was a nice little sandy/rocky bit of coast with a small white house on top of it. I was there for two hours. I completely cut myself off from everyone around me. First I took off my shoes and walked barefoot on a patch of sand and let the cold ocean water slowly make my feet numb. The entire time I was looking out over the Firth just thinking about life, myself, and others.

My view on the world is complicated, but simple to say. Maybe not so much to explain. However, I believe in choices. Everything is a choice. You choose. You decide. I'll explain this a bit more because after class I was seriously debating exactly how my view of choices would be explained completely considering everything that makes up a worldview.

Worldview is your idea on God, humanity, nature, questions of existence, the universe and cosmos, life, moral and ethical reasoning, suffering, death and other philosophical issues that influence how its members perceive their world. (According to my lovely intercultural book)

Now as I sat their and stared out over the Firth there was one simple thing that my choices view couldn't answer. I could answer about God, you can choose to believe in one or not, humanity has a choose of how to live their lives and purposes, we can choose to appreciate nature or destroy it, etc. etc.

However, I couldn't answer one question with that view. How did the earth get here? I know I have the idea that it was by chance and a random occurrence. But, my view of the world is very set in choices and random chance isn't a choice. Then as I was sitting there on the sand I had an Epiphany. I have never need to know everything. The answer to how the earth happened may not be consistent with my overall worldview, but that doesn't mean it can't be a dimension of it.

I have no religion. I have no label. As I sat there staring at a couple of seals playing in the Firth I asked myself. Am I as happy as people with religions? Am I as happy as someone with a label like Agnostic or an Atheist?

My answer was yes. I'm as happy, if not happier than anyone else in the world. I then just sat on the sand and stared out over the ocean while I watched the seals CHOSE to play with each other. I was happy I CHOSE to come to Scotland.