A few days ago, I had a conversation with my sister. It was something about making choices in one’s life. The conversation went deeper than discussing how choices affect our life trajectory; instead, we discussed our distortion of the concept of making choices.
People always tell us to make the right choice and decide on the “thing” that makes us excel in life. Almost every disaster in our life can be traced back to that first choice we had made, so what they said. Our success had actualized because we acted on the right choices, and on the contrary, our failure is undoubtedly due to our inability to discern the bad ones from the good ones.
Yes, we feel like we can choose things on our own, almost consciously. However, it never occurred to us that the reason we choose is never because we want to, but because we need to.
We often tell ourselves that we are the master of our life; we can manipulate and mold it into the way we want it to be, and the feeling of having no total control over our lives will crush the remaining hope of continuing. By that unconscious mindset, we agree with other people when they tell us to choose wisely, and it is our fault when we choose otherwise.
I feel tedious when I walk through my life based on a fallacy that has been around me since I was born. This false idea tells us that we can choose whatever we want in our life when in fact, the scope of choices presented to us is established based on what society demands of us. In actuality, We never get to choose what we want; we choose what we need to survive.
When we choose, we feel as if we are the starting point, the unique individual who dictates and is in charge of the direction of the event. Unfortunately, we almost miss out on the point that the individual is, in fact, the residue of what society has left. In this context, the feeling of being proud of that sense of independence is an utter fairy tale. Our decision is never the first one that pops out of nowhere; it is merely a tiny fraction hidden among the millions of intricate chains of civilization.
Our society is highly result-oriented; almost every consequence, be it positive or negative, tends to be magnified under a colored and distorted magnifying glass. In that culture, we are deprived of what makes us truly unique- the exercise of our will. We have been told that everything revolves around the epilogues of making choices; we can only feel good about ourselves when we act on the right ones.
So…
We judge ourselves because we acted on the wrong choices.
We feel depressed because that terrible choice has made us miserable in life.
People disdain us because we are not “wise” enough to make the right choices.
And life sucks because we find ourselves trapped in the loop of making bad choices.
Almost every perception people have of ourselves is based on the results we deliver. YES, it is essential in a corporate setting, and that is not what I am concerned about. I am not worried about our status in a structured society; I am concerned about our core perception as humans and what we honestly think we are.
We are always not ourselves because we are so used to judging ourselves based on a false template, and we are merely choosing the things that people want us to choose (either directly or indirectly). Ironically, we are being blamed when things go sideways.
What makes us humans is not what we choose, or the results of our own choosing. What makes us truly humans is our will to choose.
Things would be so different if we judge ourselves by the courage we possess even though we know the front road is tough and we might fail in the end.
Things would be so different if we looked past where our choices might bring us, and instead, we feel proud of that individual who makes choices because she knows she has to.
We are humans, not a “result deliverer.” The sense of being a human cannot be contaminated by how good we are at making choices; as we all know, almost every choice we make is somewhat linked to other people’s influences and not our natural longings and desires (OBSERVE CLOSELY), also, we cannot be sure that the choice we made can benefit us in a long-term manner.
I AM GONNA TELL MYSELF.
It is ok if I mess up everything in life because of making the wrong choices. I understand that I am not the result of that choice; I am the one who makes that choice.
You may find the whole article ambiguous because it is, and it is supposed to make you feel ambiguous so that you can retreat and not be judgmental of yourself based on a one-time template.
Thank you.