Embracing the power to choose
“You can do anything in this world if you are prepared to take the consequences.”
—W. Somerset Maugham
Freedom to choose. This basic belief is so much a part of American society that it’s imbedded in every part of our lives—from big choices such as where to live, who to love, and what to do with our lives to the avalanche of small, everyday choices such as what kind of laundry detergent to buy. Yet for all the big and small choices we make every day, many of us become paralyzed when asked to choose our reactions to things that we feel are outside of our control. We feel helpless. Trapped. Victimized by circumstances or other people. If left unexamined, many of us get stuck in a twilight of disappointment and inaction, yearning to break free yet convinced we lack the ability to change our situations.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the lives of people who make excuses as to why they are miserable. “I have to do this,” they say. “I have no choice.” When offered ways to change their situation, they retreat and give reasons why no other option exists for them beyond staying stuck. Eventually this quagmire of inaction becomes quicksand that sucks in more and more parts of their lives. These are the individuals who have chosen to remain helpless. They look at the cost of change and settle for the comfort of their problems rather than taking the consequences of fixing them.
The philosopher Jean-Paul Sarte once noted that there’s a secret comfort in telling yourself you’ve got no options, because it’s easier to wallow in feeling trapped than to face the dizzying responsibilities of freedom. And make no mistake, freedom is scary stuff. Every choice we make comes with an opportunity cost—something we have to give up in order to choose something else. Big, uncomfortable choices come with the highest price tags, many times ones that risk our financial and emotional comfort zones or some of our most cherished relationships. In every situation where we feel we’re “damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” freedom lies in be willing to either make that change or find a way to live peacefully with current circumstances. In other words, we have to decide if we’re going to go through life feeling like victims or free people.
Each of us is a victim of something. Some of us are victims of many somethings. These are things large or small that we never would have chosen for ourselves yet they landed on us anyway. Yet some choose to change what they can within the framework of their lives, even if it’s just their perspectives. Rather than throw up their hands and adopt a “why does everything always happen to me?” mindset, they ask, “what can I do to learn and grow from this experience?” People who choose not to be victims—even when they’ve been victimized by unspeakable things—are those who understand that the ultimate freedom is the ability to choose our reactions to things. They embrace what Holocaust survivor, psychologist and author Viktor Frankl once stated:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
The path to creative and personal freedom lies in this choice. It’s played out in the big decisions we make, as well as the way we think about our lives. Instead of saying we “have to” we say we “choose to.” We examine our wounds and resentments. We accept what can’t be changed and we work to free ourselves by changing what we can. We accept that this journey is never over, but that freedom lies in the tiny crevices and minuscule moments when we pull ourselves up to our full adult stature and say: I choose.
Photo by Javier Allegue Barros, courtesy of UpSplash