Choice

If we have the intellectual capacity to exercise choice, then it's all about the choices we make - life that is.

We all make them, choices; big ones, small ones, in-between ones. Choice is at the center of our lives, in fact there are so many choices to make that we need to introduce all kinds of shortcuts just to make living possible. Shortcuts like how we get dressed, where to buy our morning coffee, what to say to the people we don't know but see every day (often numerous times). These "routines" are a good thing, without them we'd probably never get anything done. But whether automated or not, these actions we do are choices. Choices we make and which we could also unmake ... not necessarily easily ... but we could choose differently. But we chose, always.

There’s danger in not recognizing that you make choices, always. Dangers like, not accepting accountability for the consequences of your choices, or more importantly the real possibility, dare I say likelihood, of you continuing to make choices which are, well, really bad.

In making choices then, even a choice that may be a choice of one, we exercise a truly innate freedom, and while the choice we make might not always be the preferred or ideal choice, it is still of our making.

Now, you can suggest or argue that there are occasions where one has no real choice, but I’m not sure that’s really true. We are always free to make a choice, even when we are forced or threatened with only one alternative. These situations may not be terribly comfortable, or pretty, or just, but a choice they remain ... at the very least a choice to comply or not. Claiming no choice is really more often an application to a convention of convenience, an application that others will often approve, with appropriate sympathies, if only to maintain easy access themselves to that remedy on some future occasion.

Yes nothing more comfy, I think we can all agree, than a nice pair of fuzzy victim slippers … Oh the humanity, the bliss of having our conscience bunions so readily relieved.