Every time we face the need to choose, it is worth remembering that in fact there are only two options before us.

A choice in favour of the past, or a choice in favour of the future.

The choice in favour of the past.

This is a choice in favour of the habitual and the familiar.

In favour of what has already been in our life.

Choosing the past, we choose stability and familiar routes; we keep the confidence that tomorrow will look like today.

No changes are needed, and no effort.

Every peak has already been climbed, one can rest on one’s laurels. Or, alternatively — we feel bad and it is hard. But at least it is familiar and habitual. And who knows, perhaps in the future it will be worse still…

The choice in favour of the future.

Choosing the future, we choose anxiety.

The unknown and the unpredictable.

Because the future — the real future — cannot be foreseen.

The future cannot be foreseen or guessed, but it can be planned. Yet quite often planning the future is planning an endless repetition of the present.

No, the real future is the unknown. That is why this choice deprives us of calm, and unease settles into the soul… but development and growth exist only in the future. They are not in the past; the past has already happened and can only repeat itself. It will never be different.

So, every time we are in a situation of serious (and sometimes not so serious) choice, the figures of two angels stand before us: one of them is called Calm, and the other Anxiety.

Calm points to a road well trodden by you or by other people.

Anxiety points to a path that runs into impassable windfall.

Only the first road leads backwards, and the second one forwards.

An old Jewish man named Abraham, as he was dying, called his children to him and said to them:

— When I die and stand before the Lord, He will not ask me:

“Abraham, why were you not Moses?”

And He will not ask: “Abraham, why were you not Daniel?”

He will ask me: “Abraham, why were you not Abraham?!”

Text by Illia Lapytov