4 | FEBRUARY 23 • 2023 

PURELY COMMENTARY

from The DJN Foundation Executive Director
Lesson from My Eighth-Grade Self
D

estiny, Choice Not 
Chance. Four simple, 
yet powerful words. 
Thus began the speech 
that I wrote and 
performed for 
the Optimist 
Oratorical 
Competition 
as an eighth-
grade forensics 
student at 
Orchard Lake 
Middle School. I must 
have rehearsed that thing 
hundreds of times over a 
four-month period. My poor 
family! To this day, if I say 
“destiny, choice not chance” 
to my brother, he experiences 
flashbacks and heart 
palpitations. It’s a problem.
Yet my hard work paid 
off; I was one of three 
students in my class to be 
plucked from obscurity to 
participate that spring in the 
Big Show — the Optimist 
Club Meeting at the Stage 
Deli in West Bloomfield. But 
more important than my five 
minutes of fame were the 
lessons that were ingrained 
into me about the power we 
have over our lives.
“To begin with,” I said, 
“destiny is something that 
is meant to happen. It’s 
preordained, predetermined, 
inevitable. Pretty fatalistic, I 
must say. If I follow that line 
of reasoning and assume my 
life is mapped out for me, no 
matter what I do, then why have 
dreams? Why have desires? Why 
work hard to achieve a goal?
“There are two types of people 
in the world,” I went on to say, 
“spectators and participants. The 

spectators watch. They sit on the 
sidelines. They may scream and 
cheer and carry-on, but their 
behavior has no impact on the 
outcome of the game. 
“It’s the players, the 
participants, who actually do 
have a say in the outcome of the 
game. Therefore, I choose to be a 
participant in the game of life. I 
choose to choose my destiny.”
I look back at the teen 
who wrote these words 
and have to smile at her 
naivete. As children, we 
can be blind believers in 
optimism because we think 
life is black and white. We 
are either happy or sad, good 
or bad, successes or failures. 
As adults, we come to 
understand that life is much 
more nuanced than that. We 
are the products of our vast 
experiences, of the choices 
we’ve made and how we react 
to what life throws at us.
Life is actually much like 
those Choose Your Own 
Adventure books that were 
popular when I was a kid. No 
matter how hard we try to 
take control by “choosing our 
destiny,” choice always comes 
with consequences — the 
promise of success coupled 
with the risk of failure. 

COURAGEOUS CHOICES
Yet, there is something both 
courageous and empower-
ing about making our own 
choices rather than letting 
fate alone have its say. Even 
when life doesn’t feel fair, it’s 
how we respond — through a 
lens of positivity or negativity 
— that shapes us as humans. 
That’s the true choice. 

As American author and 
lecturer Brené Brown puts it 
in her book Rising Strong, “We 
can choose courage or we can 
choose comfort, but we can’t 
have both. Not at the same 
time. Vulnerability is not 
winning or losing; it’s having 
the courage to show up and 
be seen when we have no 
control over the outcome.”

TAKING ACTION
Those words are truer than 
ever today, especially at a 
time, when it often feels like 
life is just “happening” to us. 
How do we stay positive in 
the face of the recent inci-
dents of antisemitism and 
violence against the Jewish 
people, or the epidemic of 
gun violence in this country 
like the mass shooting in our 
own backyard at MSU last 
week that left us reeling with 
helplessness and anger? Do 
we just sit back and observe 
these events, or do we choose 
to take action? 
Choice can indeed be 
overwhelming in the face of 
such tremendous obstacles, 
but it doesn’t have to be 

large and sweeping in its 
scope. Where one person 
might paint signs and 
march through the street, 
another might call her 
congressperson or buy a cup 
of coffee for a stranger who 
is having a tough day. The 
smallest of actions matter, 
and before you know it, 
you’ve started a movement; 
our small choices can change 
the world. 
Today, I still have that 
hopeful 13-year-old inside 
of me, but I am also a 
complex product of all of 
the experiences life has 
thrown my way. It would 
have been easy and perhaps 
even understandable for 
me to turn into a cynic, but 
that’s not who I am. I choose 
positivity rather than blind 
optimism. I choose to be 
relentlessly kind. I choose 
choice. 
Shockingly, I didn’t win the 
West Bloomfield Optimist 
Oratorical Contest that year. 
I came in third place (I know 
you were on the edge of 
your seat). But I did glean 
important lessons about the 
way I wanted to — and have 
— lived my life. I choose to 
be in action, even in the face 
of the fear and uncertainty 
we live with every day. And 
when you are feeling helpless 
and afraid to act, I encourage 
you, too, to walk the truth of 
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 
words: “Our lives begin to 
end the day we become silent 
about things that matter.” 

Marni Raitt is executive director of 

the Detroit Jewish News Foundation.

Marni Raitt

Marni’s eighth-grade picture

