Image: Arvind Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Happy Weekend fam! I hope you’re all doing well today and getting things accomplished. Whatever it may be – large, small, or in between – it feels good to achieve goals and check things off the “to do” list. I’m finishing out my first year of grad school (wait… it’s been a year already? Wow!) and preparing to move into a new place so there’s lots on my list, but, thankfully, it’s all coming along.

I was recently talking to a colleague about how “choice” seems to have become a 4-letter word in this world where many people have come to expect instant gratification and to believe that they can have it all without having to give anything up. In this current climate, freedom has, for many, become synonymous with free-for-all and, as one of my professors recently put it, "we have become so 'free' to do what we want that we don’t realize when we are doing things that are very destructive and counterproductive to ourselves and others."

The Orisa Esu is the exact antithesis of the anti-choice attitude. As the divine messenger and guardian of the crossroads, Esu is the embodiment of choice who consistently reminds us to look at all sides of a situation before making a decision, but who insists that a decision be made. Looking the crossroads – one of Esu’s main symbols – it is easy to see that one cannot go up at the same time as one is going down and one cannot go left at the same time as one is going right. We have to choose a path and follow it. Refusing to choose keeps us stuck in the same place until someone or something comes along to make the choice for us. Refusing to choose robs us of the agency with which we have each been endowed in the form of ori,our inner head and consciousness.

Choosing one path doesn’t mean that we can’t change directions or return to the crossroads and pick another path but, dislike it as we may, we must recognize that there are some choices that are fundamentally incompatible with others.  There are some roads that do not lead to the same place. This means that we cannot engage in things haphazardly, but have to be very clear about where we are going and why. It means we have to prioritize and make tough decisions about what – and who – is really important to us. Most importantly, we have to accept that “everything ain’t for everybody” and that, as such, there are roads we may try to walk down only to find the path blocked. And for good reason.

Today and every day, I pray that each of us is able to evaluate self in truth and in light, to recognize the motivations behind our choices and to make sound decisions guided by our ori and our divinities. May the choices we make continue to serve us well long after we have made them. Ase!