I fell in love with him. But I don’t just stay with him by default as if there’s no one else available to me. I stay with him because I choose to, every day that I wake up, every day that we fight or lie to each other or disappoint each other. I choose him over and over again, and he chooses me.
Veronica Roth
This article is inspired by the podcast of Cory Muscara on the topic of Always Have A Choice.
In the article by Stephen Cave, it is mentioned: “Many scientists say that the American physiologist Benjamin Libet demonstrated in the 1980s that we have no free will. It was already known that electrical activity builds up in a person’s brain before she, for example, moves her hand; Libet showed that this buildup occurs before the person consciously makes a decision to move. The conscious experience of deciding to act, which we usually associate with free will, appears to be an add-on, a post hoc reconstruction of events that occurs after the brain has already set the act in motion.”
Now, there is no reason to start arguing whether we have a free will or whether our actions and situations that happen to us are based on determinism. For instance, there is no way we could choose into which family we would like to be born or how our first years of life would look like. However, as we were getting older, we slowly realize we can be in a charge of our life (thankfully) at least to a degree.
Let’s face the fact that we are now where we are and moving forward, we want to live a fulfilling life. One may say that it is the destiny of our life that determines every choice we make, others may say, it is all on our shoulders and the life choices we made were already “written in the stars”. These are two very black and white statements.
The truth is somewhere in between.
The example of my choice to show how The Ultimate Choice demonstrates itself in our lives will be using an example of (romantic) relationships.
Broadly speaking, we never choose a person to enter our life. We may come across them because of a different choice we had to make previously, or simply due to the circumstances we ended up in and their appearance in our life was in all cases – unexpected. Similarly, as we cannot choose what kind of people will appear in our surroundings, it is similar with people we develop romantic feelings for – attraction is not always a choice.
However, let’s continue with the example of romantic relationships. Having come across the person we feel attracted to, after our recognition of these feelings, the power of choice is in our hands in terms of our side of the relationship. We can choose to meet the person again, again and again and we have a choice of how we treat them. We also choose whether we commit or not. On the other hand, we have no power over how they initially respond to us, how they treat us back and which kind of steps they decide to take from their side of the relationship.
The Ultimate Choice
However, we always have a choice in how we respond to their behavior.
This rule is applicable in our life in many other aspects.
Let me give you and example from my personal life.
Few months later, I experienced a situation where I was rejected from a longer relationship. Few seconds after the heavy words of decision were said from the side of the other person, I recognized the The Ultimate Choice I had in front of me – whether I respond kindly, calmly and rationally – or I respond emotionally, hysterically and hatefully. I admit that the option number one was my immediate conscious decision despite its challenging delivery. Even though it was not possible for me to stick to this one choice of communication entirely, what was important was that I recognized the power of a choice I had – even in a difficult situation. There are always more sides to choose from when addressing a problem. The challenge is in in the split of a moment of recognizing that we do have The Ultimate Choice in our reaction towards it. This can prevent us from feeling helpless or at mercy of the situation we are in.
Whether it is our response to another human being, or just a choice to follow or not to follow our specific thoughts, we have always at least, a partial choice in terms of the response we give out.
The only thing you sometimes have control over is perspective. You don’t have control over your situation. But you have a choice about how you view it.
Chris Pine
Ultimately, coming across this article most likely wasn’t your choice. Nevertheless, thank you for choosing to read it :).
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