The ability to choose
In an important way this essay is a response to something I wrote about four years ago. I suggest reading that as well.
I feel that many people are alienated from their own ability to choose. They may have trouble pursuing goals reliably, planning their life, accepting or declining opportunities, or committing to relationships. They avoid or struggle with situations that require decisive, irreversible action—action that narrows the future, and concretizes it. For several years I lived in this way, and during that time my life felt like something that was happening to me. I experienced pervasive confusion; I had personally made every major decision that shaped my conditions, but nonetheless I felt viscerally like the life that emerged from those decisions was not mine. I felt like my true life was something else; some grand tapestry of adventure with stakes, love, and magic, and not the dreary, desaturated reality in front of me.
It is harsh to say it like this, but this attitude is the signature of a child; the child’s life has not fully begun, and there is ample reason to believe that the future will be more expansive and wonderful than the experience of childhood, especially given how constrained that experience is in the modern world. With the maturation into adulthood comes the necessary relinquishing of the fantasy of a different future; the transition into adulthood is complete precisely when one notices that the long-awaited future has arrived.
However, accepting reality can be challenging. Real adult life rarely resembles the invigorating fantasies of childhood, and to look at what is, one must let go of those beloved dreams. This process of letting go is a grief-soaked endeavor, and can feel tantamount to a betrayal of the childhood self. But it is a necessary step, and it is not a betrayal. Life is a dialog with the world, and the first step in that dialog is turning one’s face away from imaginary wonders and towards the world and the current conditions of life as they are. This is an act of honesty, an act of courage, and in fact an act of love—because what is love, other than a willingness to accept something in its entirety?
From this position of clear-sighted, honest engagement, the ability to choose can emerge.
For reasons that are not always clear to me, I like some things more than other things. In many cases these preferences turn out to stem from an error in judgment—perhaps I intuitively believe that having a particular job implies something about who I am, or that dating some person will provide me with a lasting sense of self-esteem. So we must add the corollary that honest engagement is aimed not only outwards at the world, but inwards, at the mind and the self.1 But even after thorough self-examination, clear preferences and interests remain. For example, I am deeply attracted to certain women, I enjoy rock climbing in spite of the risk, and for the last decade I’ve had a fascination with the Japanese language.
The ability to choose is the steady orientation towards preferences through concrete decisions. When the mind is blinded by the vividness of imagination, the more subtle preferences are washed out. But it is these subtle preferences that signal which directions lead to joy. Ignorance of these preferences leads to a perception of the real world as grey, which fuels a self-reinforcing retreat into fantasy. Furthermore, every opportunity is implicitly compared to an imagined ideal. As a result, decision-making stalls, both due to a lack of awareness of preferences, and as a way to guard the hope that the ideal might one day appear.
In contrast, honest engagement with reality reveals its wonderful shades and hues. The dynamic range of perception is not wasted on imaginary ideals; it is used instead to resolve the differences between available choices. Decisions become relatively straightforward, and are not questioned in retrospect. One moves from moment to moment oriented ever towards joy.
If you really think about it, you might notice that “inward” and “outward” are artificial labels the mind overlays on a single kind of seeing; that there is no inherent difference between the “inside” and the “outside.” The same observer looks the same way at everything. But that’s another rabbithole.
A lot of this failure at agency comes from the lack of acceptable choices that truly express original character.
Whether for the normal fear of alienating oneself from their surroundings or the related doubt in their own independence, people dismiss the most individuating actions as impossibilities, and with each cycle learn to avoid them more, and so to lose themselves more. Finding one’s place amongst those limits can be safe secure and satisfying, but an individual becomes easily profiled when forced into those limits, so they fear that as a kind of erasure— their choice to invalidate their individuality. Maybe in mere witnessing there is something to be said of not selling oneself to the finite available possibilities.
I find it amazing how closely your thoughts parallel Johannes de Silentio in Fear and Trembling (the one about the knights of faith) though you diverge where, within that text, it is said Hegel would diverge so maybe its more like him but I never read that guy. Of particular interest is the discussion of the interior and exterior explicitly referenced there as das Innere and das Aussere (by Hegel) yet likened, in the way you have, to “the child” and “the man” respectively. To throw one wrench in it, “the child is determined by the outer, the man by the inner”. And the confusion is the dao. Not to mention the other wrench of faith.
But anyway here’s the quote I thought of when I read your article:
“When the child is to be weaned, his mother blackens her breast; for it were a pity if her breast should look sweet to him when he is not to have it. Then the child believes that her breast has changed ; but his mother is ever the same, her glance is full of love and as tender as ever. Happy he who needed not worse means to wean his child!”
So lovely seeing the change from the (frankly, jaded) tone of the post four years ago.
If you catch yourself daydreaming more perfect scenarios or wishes, do you cut yourself short now? Or they just don’t come up much anymore to begin with