The Man MakesA choice you made asleep is still a choice you made.
Most men never choose their lives. They drift into them half-asleep and wake up at fifty wondering who signed them up. A deliberate man decides on purpose — and owns the bill.
Here is the part men miss: a choice made by default is still your choice. You just made it with your eyes closed. The job you never questioned, the habit you never examined, the obligation you never agreed to out loud — you chose all of it by not choosing. The deliberate man drags these decisions into daylight and makes them again, awake this time. Some he keeps. Some he kills. But now they are his, and a man can live with what is his.
The Stoic source
Seneca, On the Shortness of Life 1It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested.
Translated by John W. Basore
The Scripture
Ephesians 5:15-16, KJVSee then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
The move
Find one default you never consciously chose — a subscription, an obligation, a habit. Decide it on purpose. Keep it or end it, but make it yours.