Choosing to Choose
As I bumped into the passage below by David M. Boje, the fortunate encounter resonated with my deepest belief of the power of choice and reinforced the expression that follows.
“In Hollywood, a play called Tamara puts the audience in a special relationship with an experimental fiction. In Tamara, Los Angeles' longest-running play, a dozen characters unfold their stories before a walking, sometimes running, audience. Instead of remaining stationary, viewing a single stage, the audience fragments into small groups that chase characters from one room to the next, from one floor to the next, even going into bedrooms, kitchens, and other chambers to chase and co-create the stories that interest them the most. If there are a dozen stages and a dozen storytellers, the number of story lines an audience could trace as it chases the wandering discourses of Tamara is 12 factorial (479,001,600). No audience member gets to follow all the stories since the action is simultaneous, involving different characters in different rooms and on different floors. At the play, each audience member receives a "passport" to return again and again to try to figure out more of the many intertwined networks of stories. Tamara cannot be understood in one visit, even if an audience member and a group of friends go in six different directions and share their story data. Two people can even be in the same room and -- if they came there by way of different rooms and character-sequences -- each can walk away from the same conversation with entirely different stories.”
If just with a dozen storytellers and dozen stages ‘Tamara’ can have so many discourses, the possibilities of different lives for each of us, considering the innumerable choices we make every day, is beyond comprehension. The understanding that we create the world around us by exercising our option to choose is a freedom that is intoxicating as well as humbling. The idea of charting the course of our life by choosing ‘left or right’ at every cross-road has an inherent sense of power but it also strips one off the defenses of attribution of a wrong choice on everything external and hiding behind the sub-conscious guise of feeling like a victim when things go wrong.
In fact the debate about whether the path of our lives is ‘deterministic’ that is decided by the external environment or ‘voluntaristic’ that is decided by exercising our individual volition is one that is continual and adopts a hue based on the stream of thought that generates it.
‘Astrology’ a prevalent art, science and method of divination is extremely popular because its primal characteristic lies in being predictive. Those who believe in it argue that majority wants to know what the future holds for them, with an underlying assumption that their future has been decided and the task left for them is to discover the decision, so why not take a sneak preview via astrology. The argument on the other side tilts toward the magic of choice. A genre of thought as described in the book and the movie 'The Secret' by Rhonda Byrne on the ‘Law of Attraction’ goes to the extent of saying that each of our individual thought creates the world around us and hence the way our lives look right now is because of the choices we made (and thought of) yesterday.
One could claim a relief in the opposing views by accepting the roles of both ‘choice’ and ‘fate’ in creating our worlds, but considering the fact that if nothing else we possess an option of choosing our response to so to say ‘external’ events or even choosing not to choose, the power of choice might just be weightier enough to tilt the balance in its favor.
Yoganand Pramahansa in ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ talks of the strength of individual volition:
“Occasionally I told astrologers to select my worst periods, according to planetary indications, and I would still accomplish whatever task I set myself. It is true that my success at such times has been preceded by extraordinary difficulties. But my conviction has always been justified: faith in divine protection, and right use of man's God-given will, are forces more formidable than are the influences flowing from the heavens.”
Even Richard Bach in his book ‘One’ talks about parallel worlds based on the choices we make – from as simple as choosing to eat a healthier meal to as ‘quantum’ as choosing to live in an alternate world- our present is a sequence of conscious and unconscious choices made in the past.
Accepting the idea of voluntarism’s dominion over determinism comes with huge responsibility that any freedom carries. If we cannot blame external circumstances then the pressure to make the right decisions seems formidable at first. Here is where a ‘strong, central core’ enters. To make the choice that shapes the life we want we need to begin with knowing what we want and reinforce it despite adversities.
This is analogous to a strong physical ‘core’ that is indispensable for every effort in the direction of enhanced fitness. The core, comprising of lower back and abdomens, plays a primary role in performing all other exercises because that is the source of one’s stability and balance- hence performing any category of physical exercise begins with developing a strong core. In the same vein, a strong core of individual ideology is a pre-requisite for choosing to choose because it provides the strength to make a choice and the stability when the choice ostensibly backfires.
Making a choice hence is an exhilarating thought that provides us the potential to mould ourselves and the world around us in subjectivity of our beliefs. But it entails dealing with questions like if I would have turned left instead of right would I be a different person, if I expect the freedom to choose am I granting this freedom to others, can I choose not to make a choice, do I possess the strength to stick to my core if my choice does not produce intended consequence and most importantly can I endure and enjoy the responsibility and lack of external attribution that the power of choice brings? Discovering how to answer in the affirmative to all of these is what grants us the freedom of choosing to choose.
As I bumped into the passage below by David M. Boje, the fortunate encounter resonated with my deepest belief of the power of choice and reinforced the expression that follows.
“In Hollywood, a play called Tamara puts the audience in a special relationship with an experimental fiction. In Tamara, Los Angeles' longest-running play, a dozen characters unfold their stories before a walking, sometimes running, audience. Instead of remaining stationary, viewing a single stage, the audience fragments into small groups that chase characters from one room to the next, from one floor to the next, even going into bedrooms, kitchens, and other chambers to chase and co-create the stories that interest them the most. If there are a dozen stages and a dozen storytellers, the number of story lines an audience could trace as it chases the wandering discourses of Tamara is 12 factorial (479,001,600). No audience member gets to follow all the stories since the action is simultaneous, involving different characters in different rooms and on different floors. At the play, each audience member receives a "passport" to return again and again to try to figure out more of the many intertwined networks of stories. Tamara cannot be understood in one visit, even if an audience member and a group of friends go in six different directions and share their story data. Two people can even be in the same room and -- if they came there by way of different rooms and character-sequences -- each can walk away from the same conversation with entirely different stories.”
If just with a dozen storytellers and dozen stages ‘Tamara’ can have so many discourses, the possibilities of different lives for each of us, considering the innumerable choices we make every day, is beyond comprehension. The understanding that we create the world around us by exercising our option to choose is a freedom that is intoxicating as well as humbling. The idea of charting the course of our life by choosing ‘left or right’ at every cross-road has an inherent sense of power but it also strips one off the defenses of attribution of a wrong choice on everything external and hiding behind the sub-conscious guise of feeling like a victim when things go wrong.
In fact the debate about whether the path of our lives is ‘deterministic’ that is decided by the external environment or ‘voluntaristic’ that is decided by exercising our individual volition is one that is continual and adopts a hue based on the stream of thought that generates it.
‘Astrology’ a prevalent art, science and method of divination is extremely popular because its primal characteristic lies in being predictive. Those who believe in it argue that majority wants to know what the future holds for them, with an underlying assumption that their future has been decided and the task left for them is to discover the decision, so why not take a sneak preview via astrology. The argument on the other side tilts toward the magic of choice. A genre of thought as described in the book and the movie 'The Secret' by Rhonda Byrne on the ‘Law of Attraction’ goes to the extent of saying that each of our individual thought creates the world around us and hence the way our lives look right now is because of the choices we made (and thought of) yesterday.
One could claim a relief in the opposing views by accepting the roles of both ‘choice’ and ‘fate’ in creating our worlds, but considering the fact that if nothing else we possess an option of choosing our response to so to say ‘external’ events or even choosing not to choose, the power of choice might just be weightier enough to tilt the balance in its favor.
Yoganand Pramahansa in ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ talks of the strength of individual volition:
“Occasionally I told astrologers to select my worst periods, according to planetary indications, and I would still accomplish whatever task I set myself. It is true that my success at such times has been preceded by extraordinary difficulties. But my conviction has always been justified: faith in divine protection, and right use of man's God-given will, are forces more formidable than are the influences flowing from the heavens.”
Even Richard Bach in his book ‘One’ talks about parallel worlds based on the choices we make – from as simple as choosing to eat a healthier meal to as ‘quantum’ as choosing to live in an alternate world- our present is a sequence of conscious and unconscious choices made in the past.
Accepting the idea of voluntarism’s dominion over determinism comes with huge responsibility that any freedom carries. If we cannot blame external circumstances then the pressure to make the right decisions seems formidable at first. Here is where a ‘strong, central core’ enters. To make the choice that shapes the life we want we need to begin with knowing what we want and reinforce it despite adversities.
This is analogous to a strong physical ‘core’ that is indispensable for every effort in the direction of enhanced fitness. The core, comprising of lower back and abdomens, plays a primary role in performing all other exercises because that is the source of one’s stability and balance- hence performing any category of physical exercise begins with developing a strong core. In the same vein, a strong core of individual ideology is a pre-requisite for choosing to choose because it provides the strength to make a choice and the stability when the choice ostensibly backfires.
Making a choice hence is an exhilarating thought that provides us the potential to mould ourselves and the world around us in subjectivity of our beliefs. But it entails dealing with questions like if I would have turned left instead of right would I be a different person, if I expect the freedom to choose am I granting this freedom to others, can I choose not to make a choice, do I possess the strength to stick to my core if my choice does not produce intended consequence and most importantly can I endure and enjoy the responsibility and lack of external attribution that the power of choice brings? Discovering how to answer in the affirmative to all of these is what grants us the freedom of choosing to choose.
posted by Garima at 4:31 AM
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