We always have a choice
We often hear the phrase “I don’t have any choice”. Perhaps you’ve used it yourself. I know I certainly have. But the older I get the more convinced I become that this is in fact a lie. Typically a lie we tell ourselves. But a lie nonetheless.
It’s a phrase that one usually hears in difficult circumstances. A phrase we employ when painful decisions must be made, or perhaps when we know that decisions we make will hurt others. But I have come to the conclusion that it is almost always a lie. It’s a tool we use to justify putting ourselves in— or staying in — shitty situations. A tool that allows us to deny that we have had any agency in creating our own suffering, or the suffering of others. A device we use to fabricate a shallow and fragile acceptance of situations we would rather not be in. Saying “I don’t have a choice” somehow allows us to accept a situation and ‘get on with life’ even when it’s a life that goes against the grain of our soul and against the values we hold in the core of our being.
It is many years now since I banished the phrase “I have to” from my life and replaced it with the more accurate and infinitely more honest “I choose to”. It was a simple albeit emotionally confronting switch. But it was incredibly empowering. Suddenly I could see that almost every circumstance of my life was the result of my choices. Many of those choices created wonderful circumstances and I had no difficulty accepting the credit for those. But there were plenty of other choices that led to really shitty outcomes and I noticed that those were the times I would typically resort to saying “I had to, I had no choice”.
A big one for me at the time was the thorny issue of work-life balance. I was a busy professional who traveled a lot for work and while I was confident I was providing very well for my young family’s material needs I was not as present as I wanted to be to provide for their emotional and spiritual needs. I was doing my best under the circumstance, but it fell short of what in my heart-of-hearts I really wanted. I justified this short-fall to myself (and my partner and kids) with the phrase “I don’t have a choice”. This was what the job required, so this was what I had to do. The circumstances were shitty, but I didn’t have a choice.
Except I did.
My career was my choice. That job was my choice. The house, the mortgage that paid for it, and the salary required to pay it off each month were all my choice. I began to see that my entire way of living ultimately came down to choices. So the fact that I felt trapped in a cage of financial bondage was, in the final analysis, my choice. The way I invested my time and energy was my choice. The food I put in my mouth was my choice. I didn’t actually have to do anything, I chose to do things — for myriad reasons. And as I began interrogating my life and considering those choices I began to see that sometimes the reasons were pretty lame. I was making choices based on ego; out of fear; in response to social pressure and cultural norms. And all too often I found that those choices weren’t consistent with my core values, with my own sense of who I was. I was doing violence to myself and robbing myself of my own power, then plastering over the cracks with the paper-thin excuse of “I didn’t have a choice”.
Do no evil
One of the contexts that I have noticed a lot of use of the phrase “I don’t have a choice” is when people are discussing the various evils associated with things like climate change, capitalism and industrial civilisation. The conversation goes something like this:
“I hate that fossil fuels are causing climate change but I need a car to drive to work. I don’t have any choice.”
“I don’t like the treatment of animals in factory farms but I can’t afford the more ethical options so I don’t have a choice.”
“It’s terrible what mining rare-earths does to the environment but you can’t survive these days without a mobile phone so we don’t really have a choice.”
As offensive as my next statement may seem — and I am certain it will initially offend some— I have to say that every one of those statements above is actually a lie.
They are lies we tell ourselves because we find ourselves in shitty situations where we are acting in ways that are inconsistent with our values and which create an uncomfortable internal dissonance between who we think we are and what we actually do.
We tell ourselves a lie so that we can find some internal peace and keep going, accept ourselves and our shitty situation, and avoid facing the alternatives.
The truth is that we almost always have a choice. We just don’t always want to admit that the things we do are the result of choices we are making.
I’m not saying any of this to guilt anyone into changing their behaviour. I am saying it to encourage people to own their own power. The minute you swap “I have to” with “I choose to” a whole new world of power and opportunity opens up to you. Suddenly you realise that to a very large extent you are in control of your own life and your own destiny, and collectively we are in control of our societies, civilisation and our individual and collective impact on the planet. We cease being [self defined] victims of oppressive individuals, governments and ‘the system’ and start being agents for positive change in our own lives and the lives of those around us.
Surrendered, not taken
A recent discussion on post-humanism and the threat of technology “taking away” our humanity prompted me to recall this quote:
“One’s dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.”
I thought it had come from Eleanor Roosevelt but surprisingly it turns out it was actor Michael J. Fox. But historically significant figures like Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela have all tapped in to a similar vein of truth, namely that all too often we can tell ourselves that something has been taken away from us, when if fact the truth is that we have surrendered it.
Most people would argue that if someone holds a gun to your head (or perhaps the head of a loved one) and demands that you do something against your principles that you “have no choice”. It’s a completely understandable assessment, but I would argue it is actually not true. People in this situation (and sadly I have been in this situation myself, so for me this is not a hypothetical exercise) are confronted with a terrible choice; to either comply with the demand, or to face the consequences of non-compliance. In such a horrific situation we readily say that the person “has no choice” because the consequences of one of the choices seems impossible to contemplate, but there is actually still a choice. We knowingly, almost automatically lie about the scenario to appease the guilt we feel about chosing the alternative. We chose our own life (or the life of our loved one) over whatever the alternative is, and we justify our choice by pretending we had no choice.
In my situation I chose what I deemed to be right in that moment and I own the fact that I made a choice, rather than surrender my power and view myself as a victim of ‘circumstance beyond my control’. Thankfully in my situation no one ended up being harmed and the consequences were negligible. But it could have ended very differently and I would have to own the consequences of my choice. History is full of examples of people who owned the fact that they had a choice and they chose to suffer or even die as a consequence. Yes these are extreme situations, and hopefully you will never have to face such a choice. But the point is that even in these extremes situations a choice is still being made. So how much more so is it true in lesser situations? When it’s not our life on the line, but merely our comfort or our convenience or our ‘lifestyle’? Might we sometimes tell ourselves that we have no choice to avoid the guilt that comes from knowing our choice has harmed someone else?
“But . . .”
I have had this conversation numerous times with friends and acquaintances over the years and there are always the “but”s raised. Is it really this simple? Do we really always have a choice?
You may have noticed that apart from the title I have qualified the “always” with an “almost” throughout this article, because it would be foolish to deny that there are sometimes circumstances in which we genuinely have no choice. But they are fewer than you might imagine at first. We certainly have no choice about dying, and many people have no choice about the manner and timing of their death (although often our choices are factors in this). We have no choice about our parents; the genes we inherit from them and the way the expression of those genes makes us variously abled; and as children no choice about the environments in which we are raised. We have no choice about genuinely natural disasters, and sometimes no choice about our participation in man-made disasters (although again our choices may be factors here). So yes there are circumstances in all our lives over which we have no control and our agency is limited to how we respond to those circumstances. But I would suggest that if you really interrogate your own life and think things through you will find that in most things you actually do have a choice.
Owning the choices you have made — and continue to make in your daily life — is an empowering act. If you find discomfort in admitting that some things are a choice I would encourage you to gently sit with that discomfort and let it speak to you. Don’t shame yourself. And don’t get trapped in guilt and denial. Most of us are doing the best we can, and I think that more often than not when we tell ourselves we have no choice it is because we are simply afraid of the alternative, unaware there even is an alternative, or perhaps sometimes too afraid to look for one. And that’s ok. But it is empowering, and I believe healthier, to own that choice and the reasons behind it. If we own our choices we then have the power — and the permission — to change them if we find they are not aligned with our values. It seems to me that to deny that you have a choice is to surrender your power, and to consign yourself to an unnecessary, unhelpful and ultimately false victimhood. My encouragement is to courageously own your choices, take back your power, and find the peace and joy that comes from living true to yourself.
