Reclaiming Choice
One of the best things about growing up is having more choice, yet most of the time we fail to claim our freedom. We have an infinite number of choices, yet we actualize or live according to only a small number. I maintain that any choice you don’t recognize as a choice is not functioning as a choice in that moment.
Choice is important for several reasons, but the one I am focusing on here is its effect on the quality of our experience. When we choose something, we open to it more fully and are more present. After all, if you choose something, you want to show up for it.
Obligation, in contrast, is strangling. It kills joy. Usually when we do something that we don’t want to out of a sense of obligation, we feel resentful on some level. We’re doing it under duress, and so we are resisting rather than embracing. You might have noticed that if you try to act generously out of obligation, you hold back energetically and do not feel the pleasure that comes with true generosity. Even with things we normally like to do, our pleasure is diminished if we are doing them because of a “should.” For example, I enjoy going for walks, but if I really want to be doing something else, I don’t get into it the same way.
This is not to dismiss the fact that there are some things that we “should” do. I find that doing these things when I want and how I want makes all the difference in the world. When I go through that stack of files simply because it’s on my to-do list and I’m not really into it, I don’t enjoy what I’m doing. But when I purge files or clean a closet or write a letter or do my taxes when it is what I want to do in that moment, the task is often not disagreeable at all. I find that the more choice I give myself, the less reaction I have to those things I don’t particularly like doing.
Reclaiming choice is making conscious decisions about things. Often the more conscious we become, the more options we see in a given moment. We see all those options we usually cut off only because they not part of our normal routine or not how we see ourselves. These are things like, “I don’t go to parties” or “I don’t speak in front of groups.” I call these policy decisions. Although we’re certainly free to make such decisions, we need to be aware of a couple of things. One is that our policies can become outdated. We forget that we change and that what was true a couple years ago or even a couple weeks ago may not be true now. The other problem is that if we get too far away from the awareness of choice, we get a little dull. Certain decisions, priorities, or conditions are programmed in and we simply live out that programming. This puts us to sleep.
To take back our freedom, we have to push back the internal censor whose parameters have become restrictive. This involves stepping over internal boundaries and going against prohibitions. You have to be willing to take a little flak when, for example, you don’t send the customary Mother’s Day card or you say no to an invitation. Perhaps you let yourself get a little showy and draw attention. If you can’t take the heat that is generated by making new choices and stirring up that part of your psyche whose job it is to keep you within the boundaries it considers safe, you’ll never break out of your conditioning and will never be free.
It is not so much the decision that is critical, but the place it is made from. You can, for example, go to the same restaurant every day and order the same lunch, but it is different if you do it without thinking than if each day you decide that this is the restaurant and the meal that would most satisfy you. Perhaps you can see how the act of bringing an awareness of choice into such decisions brings out their flavor and hidden satisfactions. When we do something without checking in or considering options, we deprive ourselves of the joy and aliveness that comes with choosing.
What we’re talking about is the sense of choice. Although this often comes as we expand our horizons and have more options available, it would be a mistake to equate choice with the number of options. You could have thirty options, but feel that as a sense of burden; alternately, you could have no options and still feel free inside. To embrace even the situation that you have no choice about is perhaps the deepest level of choice. You can choose to be present rather than turn away.
So beneath all the freedoms involved in having many choices is the freedom simply to be. It is the freedom to be who you are, without having to shape that any particular way. Once this is firmly established, choosing will feel natural again. It will not be the automatic choosing that comes from conditioning but the choosing of someone who is constantly tasting life. What could be more pleasurable than that?
