Often times banquets are part of a celebration for an event that gives recognition to someone for a job well done. It is a celebratory time and involves many different foods to accommodate all the guests’ different palates.
This event comes at the end of long, hard work where you have sweated and sacrificed and worked harder than before to accomplish something. But a banquet of consequences is something altogether different. Instead of being recognized for what you have accomplished, it is having to confront the consequences of your actions or inactions. It is when you have no option left but to acknowledge the things you did wrong or failed to do and accept responsibility for the consequences of those decisions.
Maybe it looks like a long list of dreams never pursued. Or perhaps it is a long list of people you treated badly or ignored altogether. It could be the accumulation of grief that you never worked through and released. Or maybe it is just people you used in order to further your own interests.
In any event, our choices catch up to us. And it is at that banquet of consequences that we must come to terms with the effect our choices have had. We can no longer run from dealing with our decisions or blaming other people or circumstances for where we are in our lives.
While you might be tempted to see these consequences as failures, understand that they are merely cause and effect. Everything we choose to do or not do, has a consequence – good or bad. Consequences are our biggest teachers and empowers us to make the changes we need to make in our life.
When you choose to take ownership and responsibility for your actions and decisions, you grow. You become more insightful about yourself, experienced and mature. And that is worth celebrating!
It’s also important to note that our consequences do not have to define us. We all have room for growth, and nobody makes the right decisions all of the time. How we handle the outcome of our decisions is more important. Any bad consequence we reap from our actions can always be turned into something good. There is always a lesson there to learn. We just have to be willing to look for it.
