Health
You Have No Choice
And sometimes that’s OK.
Posted September 4, 2016 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
It’s a funny thing about choice. To many people, it is very important that they have choice in their lives. Some people vigorously fight to defend their right to choose. In many ways, however, we seem to have a lot less choice than we think and, ironically, it could be the most important aspects of our lives in which we have the least choice of all.
Some types of choice seem quite straightforward. Choosing between the lamb shoulder and the grilled salmon might not take any time at all. A friend of mine recently had a choice between finishing an academic paper and going on a hot air balloon ride. He assured me that choice was so easy it didn’t even really feel like a choice. Maybe it wasn’t!
Some other choices are not really choices but are manipulative tactics to see people behave in certain ways. A teacher might say to his students “OK, girls and boys, you have a choice. You can either finish your work now or come back at lunchtime and finish it.” While this is presented as a choice, the coercive overtones are clear.
Other issues, however, are more interesting and also more profound. Do people with strongly-held Christian beliefs, for example, really choose their faith? Could a devout Christian decide, “You know, next month I think I’ll be a Hindu”? Or, do people choose their sexuality or their gender identity? Does a heterosexual person choose to be heterosexual? When did they make that decision? Does a man choose to be a man rather than a woman in the same way that you might choose a meal from a menu?
Does a vegetarian choose not to eat meat? If they do, could they simply decide to have a break from their vegetarianism and tuck into an eye fillet on Friday night. In some ways, it seems like they should be able to but, could they? Really? I know as an enthusiastic carnivore I could choose to be a vegetarian if I wanted to—at least that’s what I tell myself. Truthfully though, I don’t think I’d make it past lunchtime.
It is the case that when one path is chosen, this has the effect of limiting our choices in other areas. If I choose to go to the Country Club for a Sunday afternoon drink, that means I don’t get to choose what I wear. Not completely. The Country Club has dress standards that limit the clothing choices I get to make if I want to choose that particular destination to imbibe on the weekend. I also won’t have an unrestricted range of liquids to choose from.
When I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, that meant I simultaneously gave up the pursuit of other career options. There were also lots of activities along the way that I didn’t participate in because I was doing research or writing papers or conducting some other activity related to my Ph.D. studies. At the time, however, it didn’t even feel like I was making a choice.
Constraints in some form or another are a nonnegotiable feature of day-to-day living.
Setting the course for the sort of person I want to be limits the freedom I have to do as I please. But then, that’s the point, isn’t it? Knowing clearly the person you want to be at the most fundamental places of who you are will make day to day choices much easier to negotiate. In fact, some things won’t even seem like choices. They’ll just seem like “the way it is.” Deciding to become a parent, for example, is a decision that carries with it life-changing consequences. There are lots of restrictions to a person’s choices and options once they become a parent but, for many people, the decision to become a parent is not really a choice at all—it’s just the way things have to be.
The crucial point then is not really whether or not our choices are limited. Rather, the main issue may be who is limiting the choices in our lives. If we are constraining our own choices by selecting certain preferences in order to live the life we want then it won’t even feel like our choices are limited. If another person, however, is telling us what our choices should be or need to be, or what our range of options are, this is likely to be another matter entirely.
There’s a very good reason for why it’s OK to limit our own choices but generally not OK for other people to limit them. With most choices, there’s a why question that can be answered. Why did you choose the salmon? Well, I had lamb last night and I wanted something light? Why did you want something light? I’m thinking of my health? Why are you thinking of your health? Health is important to me? Why is health important to you? I want to live a long, happy life? Why do you want to live a long, happy life? I just do. I want to see my grandkids grow up, I want to check off the bucket list, I just want a long, happy life.
At this point, there’s nowhere else to go really.
When we are making our own choices, we’re much more likely to choose options that are consistent and compatible with the “whys” that are wafting around above. When another person decides what our choices are, however, it is likely that they will interfere with some of the places revealed by asking “why.” And the most serious interference of all is the interference with that “nowhere else to go” place. When your choices are limited by someone else and you can’t be who you want to be at the “nowhere else to go” place that is the essence of who you are, it can really seem like you’re being imprisoned or unfairly shackled.
Finding your own personal “nowhere else to go” place at the core of you will provide you with a sense of purpose and clarity. Ironically, however, arriving here might be the most choice-limiting perspective of all. It is, at the same time, globally expansive and minutely focussed. Your frame of mind here is the “you” you have no choice about. It’s the “you” you don’t want any choice about.
From the “nowhere else to go” place, you really will be able to do as you please because you’ll be clear about what the things are that please you as well as the things that you don’t want to spend time on. This is the “me I most like to be” spot. It’s a place that’s hard to describe unless you’ve been there so that when you’re asked “Who do you think you are?” you know the answer because you’ve experienced it. Before you’ve been there, however, you’ll still be guessing and imagining what it might be like. From this more naive perspective, the most interesting question is not “Who do you think you are?” but, rather, “Who is asking the question?” The answer to that question will provide some important clues about the perspective from which important life decisions are made.
