It always perplexed me whenever I heard the declaration ‘you always have a choice!’
It seems a misnomer any given moment. Choice, to begin with, is such a complex idea. To add always to it just takes the complexity to an entirely new level. And to top it off, loading it with the weight of HAVE is like putting a bag of raw cotton on my shoulders, not knowing it's there, but it weighs me down when the storm reigns with the full statement: YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE!
For starters, I didn’t choose my parents. Or the culture, community, city, country, religion I was born into. Heck, I didn’t even choose my name. I didn’t choose how my features were, didn’t choose whether my hair would be straight or curly, silky, or dry. I didn’t choose whether I’d be tall, short, have siblings or not. God or genes or parents, someone made that choice for me already.
In my darkest moments, I have remembered this sentence and hated it. What choice are we talking about here, I wondered. My parents who both died before I could earn my first salary made the choice to marry as late in life as they did. My dad dying on me when I was eighteen and he was sixty plus was because of choices he made, or God made. My mother dying barely 5 years later was the same thing. The choices of others were piled on me and consequently I had to suffer.
Choice, REALLY?!!
It’s not that all choices made for me were bad. Some choices were good for me too. My parents decided to send me to a good school. Though from a financially challenging background, they offered me the opportunity to study beyond what people with similar backgrounds could think for their children. But again, I was the only child. My uncle who had five children couldn’t do the same. The irony is that in my case even the choice was made FOR me. My mother had a miscarriage just a few months into her first pregnancy and at least another after I was born. Someone else chose for them to not have the child before me. Had that baby been born, I wouldn’t have existed. And if there were a couple more children, my parents couldn’t have afforded to send me to a top school at the time.
Choice? Wherefore art thou?
As I wrestled with life, my resentment with the entire idea only grew stronger. And so did my fight with the Divine Chooser. Despite some good choices made FOR me, my resentment was the power not being there with me. Good or bad, I never had a say. I NEVER HAD ANY CHOICE! The choices- good, bad, or ugly- were made FOR me, not BY me.
I grew with this anger regarding choice. Consistently, my decisions reflected this anger. I didn’t see choices, let alone HAVE them. That too ALWAYS??!!
The thing with anger is that it comes with a huge self-defense mechanism. The mechanism tells us that a particular thing is not just likeable, it's so unfair that it boils our blood. It enrages us. It is in that moment that we become the victim and the mechanism stands hard and strong, fortifying us.
Victim… hmm. Now that is interesting.
For more than four decades of my life, I felt angry, victimized, and resentful. Then I met some interesting people in my life. One such person just casually declared the same: YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE!!
^>_$&[[)*#=/<
That’s what came into my mind when I heard it. I wanted to punch her and everyone else who was nodding in agreement with her. I wanted to shake up all these intellectual minions and tell them what's wrong with this declaration.
My mind just couldn’t process such a line of thought.
But for the first time in my life, I decided to think about this more objectively. I opened the pandora, sifting through psychology, religion, and learnt more. I thought of the lack of choice at the time I was born, when I was sent to school, when I was denied that job, when I was forced to be an adult, when I wasn’t ready.
Resentment was kicking in fast. But in some of the cases, I noticed I did better than the other situations with similar lack of choice. I saw an opening.
It all came down to one word.
Response. YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE… IN CHOOSING HOW YOU RESPOND!
As I read, talked, interacted more, playing in my mind each of the scenarios where I felt I did not have a choice, I realized it was the responses to those “external” stimuli that made all the difference between me the victim and me the victor.
I put each element of life where I had no choice and ran through it, looked at it as an objective outsider, completely disassociating myself with it. And there were revelations after revelations. My parents died early, sure. But I CHOSE to let the resentment settle in. My manager was tough. But I CHOSE to not give up. I was born into a particular community, religious group, culture and family. But I CHOSE whether to act in accordance with their understanding of life or not. It was MY choice all along.
I’d like to call this my Eureka moment, though there was not a particular moment I can single out and point at. With choice came acceptance, followed by ownership. The anger started to subside; the resentment started to vanish.
In this, I learnt the meaning of fate and the Prophetic saying that tells us that actions are based on intentions. It's all how I choose to act, respond, intend! But that is a topic for another article.
I always had a choice, and I always will. So do you. Victim or Victor? Your Choice!
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