Mi vida elegida

So I attempted to write this post yesterday, and it was complete shite, so I'm giving his a second go. On a side note, I recommend the new link I just posted. Really interesting essay out of The Barcelona Review.

I alluded the other day to my overall philosophy on life, promising a more involved explanation of the theory at a later date...today. I don't know how much you guys know about chaos theory, but, if I understand it even somewhat (which is about as far as I'll go), the basic idea is that a very small initial action can lead to a significant and much greater end result that is, in fact, not random. The common metaphor I've heard and will promptly butcher for this theory is the beating of a butterfly's wings in China can cause a hurricane in the Caribbean. In a way, this is how I envision life working. Life is a sequence of infinite choices that can lead to often unpredictable, though not random, results. To me, this makes every choice you make, no matter how small it mean seem to be, important because there is no telling what futures a seemingly insignificant choice has both created and destroyed.

Now some would argue that the path you end up on throughout your whole life is actually the only path you could have taken. You are thus fated to one specific destiny that is immutable. These people are determinists and I have to respectfully disagree. Well, that's not completely true. I will give them this, I have to be the person I am right now, and could not possibly be any other person that who I am. However, this is not because of some predetermined plan ordered by a higher being. I happen to believe that, should Gd exist, Gd is an inactive player in our lives. Gd gave man free will and left us do the rest from there. Rather, we are the people we can be right now because the sequence of choices that we have made created a unique path that could only lead to one result, the person we are now. There is no telling what kind of person we would be right now if we had made different choices, but I know absolutely that one single different choice, no matter how insignificant, would result in a different person, though maybe only slightly, then I am right now, lying on my bed, unemployed, ultimately a happy person, writing this post.

Take a second to think back to any even somewhat important choice you've made, and now make think about the alternative whether it's deciding to go to a different university, accepting a different job offer, or something as simple as a message you decide not to send. Now try to work your way forward again. Every single thing that happened as a result of that decision is now altered and perhaps even annulled. Ask yourself, am I still living where I'm living, friends with who I'm friends with, working where I'm working, reading these words at this very moment? Who even knows, and it's a hell of a mindfuck, but that's not what really matters. What actually matters is the reality we are living in, a reality of our own creation, resulting from choices we knowingly made. Where I disagree with the determinists is that we don't have to be the people we are today. We could have been any of an infinite set of variations, we're the way we are not from a set of external factors that we have no control over (Gd, fate, what have you), but rather from a set of internal ones that we do control. Our past is a straight line ending in the point that is who we are at this very moment.

Now, I don't mean to suggest that external factors have no influence on our lives. That's absurd; of course they do. Nurture plays a huge factor in our personality and how we make our choices. How and where we were raised, the opportunities afforded to us, the things we see as we grow up are all incredibly important. These are the things that when we make any decision, when we stick the two choices on a scale, help us to determine which side gets more weight. I will admit that nature probably has some effect, but it is not the dominant factor that nurture is. However, it is still a choice, and we can either let these factors control our decision-making process or simply use them as tools to help us make that choice. The key is that there are always two alternatives, regardless as to how unappealing one might seem at the time. As I argued before, there's no telling where a decision might lead, meaning that a seemingly unimaginable option now could lead to a far better future than the other, more attractive one. Because you have no idea what is going to happen in the future, you shouldn't be so rash to ignore an alternative just because it seems difficult, unattractive, or scary. Everything has worth and can lead to something amazing in the future. I often jest that my New Year's resolution is simply getting to date two due to a rough set of first dates I've had that frustratingly at the time didn't lead anywhere. My real New Year's resolution though is this: To push the boundaries of who I am and what I'm comfortable with because who knows what experiences I may be missing out on simply because I'm too afraid to try. I think so far, it's done me pretty well, and I only hope it gets better.

The whole point of the philosophy, and why I get increasingly frustrated with a lot of post-modern fiction writing, is that we are responsible for our own lot of life. It's not somebody else's fault that we may be unhappy or unsure of ourselves. We put ourselves in the position we find ourselves today, and only we can get ourselves out of it by making taking the alternative route. We control the way our life turns out. If you're unhappy, obviously the choices you've been making are not leading to your eventual happiness, so make different ones. I'm not going to stand here and say that it's easy to do such things; often it is extremely difficult. But it's not impossible. Nothing is. I unabashedly admit to being an optimist because I know for a fact that despite the future's unpredictable nature, it has the potential to lead us to happiness, as long as we aren't too afraid to act on the opportunity. The past may be a straight line, but I guarantee you that the future is not. It is an infinite and complex web of choices, and all we can do is hope that we make the choices that lead to the happiest outcomes. I accepted this a long time ago, and because of it, I don't regret anything that has happened to me in the past, as bad as it may have seemed at the time. If things had been different, I could very easily have missed out on the really good things that have come into my life recently. Maybe the alternative would have been better, but I don't let the anxiety of What if? keep me awake at night. Instead, I embrace the life I am living right now.

Music listened to while writing this post: Daft Punk-Alive (2007)