Ways of Thinking about Choice

There are so many wonderful things about just being alive, and yet all so often, I have found myself getting caught up in worries about identity and life. "How I measure up to the world" is such a huge refrain-and every so often I would need to remind myself that there are many ways to have identity in the world, and one is only really limited by a kind of collective inertia of sorts. Sometimes it does help to have a broader view, and to know that there are many choices which are out there.
   I find it interesting that the notion of choice as "one of many paths" seems to have fallen out of fashion in my mindset recently, to be replaced by the more stark and uninviting metaphor of "having to make one's own choices". This latter strikes me as a Protestant view of the universe, which is so heavily stressing on the need to somehow forge one's own destiny, without regard to the roads and paths that are already in the world.  In certain times of my life, it seems that choices are actually roads that have already been set out, and we are really only having to decide which of the "paths" to take. This metaphor is somewhat more inviting, because it suggests that there are often hidden helpers who have paved a certain way for us (perhaps even from what we have done through our own intentions in the distant past).
   I have to say that even Buddhism advocates the idea that one reaps what they sow. However, there is room there for the surprises, such as the fact that one never knows when or what will flower and when the conditions ripen. I think this is why life is so mysterious and sometimes shockingly beautiful, because it shows us things that we forgot to plant a long time ago, and have now suddenly bloomed before us--as though they had a life of their own or spontaneously emerged out of thin air.