Maybe every dichotomy is a false dichotomy (seems likely) but I still have to Act,— act in the living Present! which means I have to make choices anyway.
Even if they’re meaningless.
Otherwise:
nothing happens and/or
things happen to me but
I never happen.
I only get to happen by choosing. Exerting the force of my will upon the world, or at least attempting it.
It’s a risk, every time.
Risk of pain, risk of failure, risk of being wrong (whatever that means), risk of ending up in a worse situation, risk of being misunderstood, risky risky risky!
We make choices all day long but most of those are inconsequential, like:
what time will I get up, will I work out or not, what food will I eat, will I be impatient or kind with my child, will I be impatient or kind with myself, will I make that phone call or not, will I worry, will I be grateful, will I floss today, will I be hurt and offended, will I be vulnerable and honest, will I eat spaghetti for dinner, will I actually put away the clean laundry?
The answer to that last one is No.
It’s going to sit on the bed for a few days.
Maybe they aren’t inconsequential. The tiny choices become a trend, the trend creates a groove, the groove becomes a rut and I walk the rut because it’s easier to stick with what’s familiar than to enact change, so here I am: that’s my life.
Unless I choose to change it.
I can change it by making different tiny choices, one after another. That’s a way.
Or I can change it by making a couple of different big choices:
“We can learn to make one-time decisions that make a thousand future decisions so we don't exhaust ourselves asking the same questions again and again.”
—Greg McKeown
Here are a few of those big one-time choices I could make:
Nothing matters or everything matters
Soft shell or crunchy
Humans are inherently good or inherently evil
Life’s too short to fuck around or life’s too short to do anything but fuck around
Do the thing every single day or do it when I feel like it
Doubt myself or trust myself
Dog person or cat person or fish person 😳
We are all sinners or “no one does the wrong thing deliberately”
Bourbon or Scotch
We are part of nature or we are above nature or we are antithetical to nature
Paper or digital
Free will or determinism
Some options combine well and that’s how we get creativity and connection and crunch wrap supremes.
Some options don’t.
It’s not about the right choice or wrong choice or the accurate choice or idiotic choice or worst choice or best choice.
It’s about the goose.
It doesn’t matter who the goose is. It matters that you pick a goose. Otherwise there’s no game, just a bunch of kids sitting in a circle being bored and sad.
🔗 Here’s that song again in case you missed it also you are good enough to be a superstar so don’t even worry about it or at least if nothing else tolerate your self-hatred when it comes. It’s a feeling like the others. It will go, too.