When You Believe in Choice

Labastide-Esparbairenque, France

“Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who we imagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. "—David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

I love Wachowski brothers' movies—Matrix triology,V for Vendentta and Cloud Atlas. Their movies' recurring themes are a hero journey, and how the hero makes choices along that journey—usually the hero starts out with being completely ignorant and unaware of the world around or rather confused, at some point, he or she wakes up, becomes aware and starts fighting for things like justice, freedom and overall ignorance.

I see life as a long journey—maybe it is not as fascinating as in Wachowski's movies. Each and every choice we make, small and big, leads us to a new path. First and foremost, choosing which direction we want to go in this journey is very important.

Looking back seeing choices and decisions I had made, I see that sometimes I made choices, without thinking much, either out of social pressure or trying to meet existing social standards but there were also times when I made deliberate choices based on certain beliefs or strong desire to achieve something. Either deliberate or automatic, these choices have become the paths that form where I am heading in this journey.

I have made a fair share of mistakes and unwise choices in my life, either out of sheer ignorance or emotional turbulence. There are also times when I make good and wise choices based on clarity on possible consequences and understanding the depth of my own pain and problems or just out of compassion or kindness for myself or another being.

About three years ago, I was completely lost and going through an existential crisis. My therapist and counselor, who helped me through it, was my brother. He was very compassionate, and emotionally available enough to give me guidance and helped me understand my struggle and myself. I am forever grateful to him for that.

When I expressed him how thankful I was, he said "No, I did not help you. You helped yourself. I've become the person I am today because of your guidance and help when I was young and ignorant."

I did not even think that I had helped him. It was just out of "love and kindness" that I gave him certain guidance in the past. Consequently, I am benefitting from it, but then he could have chosen to ignore and not help me.

Recently, I've been struggling or I've been confused about certain things and my recent choices. I've been feeling that life is just meaningless and it is pointless to do anything meaningful. Whenever I get online and read news, I feel hopeless because I am constantly being fed up with the news how corporations are destroying quality of human lives, wrecking the environment, governments facilitating all these corporations to rob us (and hiding their money offshore), media brainwashing us to hate certain groups of people or blaming their selected situations.

Just to clear my contaminated mind and to have a break from the civilisation, I'd made a choice to go on a retreat— Writers and Artists Retreat in Southern France. I told them that I am not a writer, I just wanted to read, think deeply and just simply retreat.

Being surrounded by this beautiful nature, not contaminated by the civilisation outside, and good hearts and kindness of the writers in the retreat, I am feeling hopeful and having faith in humanity once again. I did not fully understand why I chose to come here but I realized now that this is exactly what I needed — to feel hopeful again.

Believing in choice, instead of fate, is not easy. It is difficult and it often feels like a burden because we are responsible for our choices. Our choices shape who we are, which direction we are going in this life journey and how we impact those around us and the world.

I may not be able to make wise choices every time.  But, I will always try to choose love, hope, truth, courage and justice. And again and again.