My Life Is up to You

We are so easily swayed by circumstances that we often become supporting actors in our own lives — mere spectators of the world we find ourselves in. We decide our plans based on what others have proposed, make choices according only to the options that are visible and patently available to us, and action springs from a range of courses that either the past, or what we can see immediately around us, dictates. This self-imposed cage can make us numb and blind, in the best case, or bitter and resentful in the worst. Why can’t we see past our circumstances, and deliberately and individually decide what we want to do? And, even most importantly, in this ocean of people, desires and possibilities, how do we know what we do want in the first place?

It’s tremendously easy to confuse having a wide range of options available with having freedom. We feel as though having more career paths at university to choose from will make us more free to pursue what we really want; having more designs of iPhone cases gives us the freedom to choose something more in accord with our own personalities and uniquely captivating traits; having more clothing stores gives us the autonomy to select the ones that really match who we are and what we really want; having more neighbourhood options to move into will lead us to a more satisfied life. On Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, there’s virtually an infinite number of people we can choose to follow; in politics, a vast array of political parties we can choose to identify ourselves with, and candidates we can vote for. Having so many options to pick from gives us an inflated sense of freedom and autonomy.

However, often times we fail to notice that we’re but choosing from a range of alternatives that are enclosed within one narrow course of action. All the alternatives will lead us to the same road, with ever so slight variations that give us the illusion of being autonomous and independent. We’re still going to university, we’re still buying an iPhone case, we’re still going to the mall. We’re still engaging in social media, choosing one particular political party and voting for a candidate. We fail to see that we don’t have to have an iPhone, go to university or identify ourselves with a political party. We can also choose to stay away from the game entirely. This illusion of freedom takes from us the ability and perspective to see things from a wider angle, and to realise that the freedom to choose from, is not the same as the freedom to choose to.

Before we carry on rambling about true freedom and autonomy and the power of cultural emancipation, there is one big caveat worth mentioning. Let’s not get carried away by the romanticism of freedom and jump into the other extreme, deceiving ourselves into believing we’re in absolute control. We’re not. We didn’t chose our parents, our school, the environment in which we were raised, our culture or period in history, our health, our genes, our psychological traits or our physical and mental abilities. That being said, there are a lot of areas in which we do get a vote, but we usually neglect this possibility because we’re blinded by the options that are thrown at us, giving us a false dichotomy in which we feel we have to pick between one of them. What if we discard them all, and look elsewhere instead?

You don’t have to pick a career, or stay in a job you dislike. You don’t have to live in the city you currently find yourself in, or even the country, for that matter. You don’t have to make progress professionally, if your profession is not your passion. You also don’t have to spend time with people whose company you don’t really enjoy all that much. In terms of consumerism, I believe the examples are clear enough that they needn’t be exemplified here. Picking between one of several brands or slightly different models of the same thing is not freedom. Freedom is deliberately pondering whether you really want to purchase that thing or not, instead of getting carried away by your surroundings, giving in to the apparent need to join in; deluded into thinking we’re making an individual choice according to our personalities (“I’ll get a pink iPhone case to show that I’m really not like the rest”. Yes, but you’re still getting one, and you still have an iPhone.)

This is not a rant against consumerism or technology. There’s nothing wrong with owning the latest tech gadget or enjoying its use. But it’s worth noticing how the decision to get it or to spend your time on it came about. Were we imperceptibly steered into feeling we needed to get one thing or the other? Or did we really make a conscious effort to evaluate our options, and decide in terms of our true needs and wants? The power of this is that it’s all in your mind. You can start taking control now, by looking around you and into your own mind, and seeing where you find yourself, and how you might have got there. It’s easy for our wants and desires to get smothered by the relentless input we get from the world, and then we forget we can choose our lives, to a certain extent, and become leading actors in it. We can change our circumstances if we’re unhappy, and we can decide not to give in, and look for alternatives beyond the palette of offers that’s been deployed under our noses.

You can really quit your job, now, and look for something you’re more satisfied with. You don’t have to wait for anyone’s approval, or for a turn of events that will help you make the decision, or make it easier to take action. You can do it now. You can, right now, decide to stop meeting with people you feel bring nothing positive to your life. You don’t owe explanations to anybody. You can choose not to go to university, not to stay in your home town, not to travel to the usual locations or pursue the usual career or life paths. You can really pack your stuff and head to the mountains in Nepal and experience life there, or decide to study Eritrean cuisine. You can decide to try and become a poet, a priest, a polymath or a plummer. And if you don’t succeed, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to explain it to anyone or feel you’ve failed. You have succeeded in being free and in trying out things, and not achieving the goal will cause nothing but a gain in wisdom.

You’re going to die. This is the only life you get, and it’s truly, completely, yours (despite all the aforementioned caveats, of course). Even though there will always be external circumstances over which you will have no control, in terms of the areas in which you can make a choice, make sure that you can identify them correctly, and that you make your choices wisely. You should be striving to make sure that you’re picking what you do, where you spend your time, and with whom, in a conscious and deliberate manner. It’s the only life you get, and spending it according to the norms or expectations of others is more than a waste of time, it’s a waste of life. You truly are going to die. Don’t forget that. Having this always in mind has the quality of giving you a sharp awareness of how you choose to spend your time. If you like writing, write more. If you like painting, paint more. Take a class. Start now. If you want to see the world, stop heeding others’ worries about the challenges and practical barriers you will face. Never mind that it’s hard, risky, crazy or unconventional. And if you simply don’t know what you want, well, then try out things. You may be 20 or 60, and from the outside may seem intrepid, or utterly lost, but who cares? It’s your only life and you’re not going to waste it. Find out.

All this being said, I believe it’s important to have in mind that your happiness should not be predicated upon achieving goals. Life often doesn’t care. You make plans, dream big, think positive, and then it turns out that life does not give a fuck. What will you do then? Getting depressed, frustrated or anxious, and blaming yourself, won’t help. The healthier and wiser option is not to have your happiness depend on achieving particular goals, but rather on being content with the way you choose to live your life and spend your time; with the people you choose to surround yourself with. All plans may fail, and all dreams may turn to disillusions, but if you chose deliberately, tried the things you wanted to try, and were satisfied with the way you decided to spend your time, then you will still be content, for there’s nothing else you could’ve done, and you were living free — free from external expectations and cultural and social circumstances. Be content now. There’s no point in seeking contentedness in the goals we set ourselves, for they will often not be accomplished, and even if they are, they might turn out not to make us as happy as we expected anyway. Be content by removing all the things that make you miserable in your life, and by having an awareness of how you choose to spend you time (by doing more of what you like doing, and less of what you consciously or perhaps unconsciously dislike).

If you’re on the right track and you think about this carefully, the end-goal of that track will lose importance, and that’s a good thing, because there’s never telling if you will really ever reach it, or if reaching it will make you as happy as you thought it would. However, being on a path you enjoy and away from the caging circumstances that were thrown at you, or from which you sprang, will give you peace of mind, energy and satisfaction. You will know that that’s what you chose and, trite as it might sound, you’ll see that success is not synonymous with a particular goal, but rather a way of living, of choosing to spend your time in a deliberate and satisfactory manner. If you live successfully, it will be because the concept of success will have shyly receded.