| Current mood: |  bored |
| Current music: | Howard Shore - Samwise the Brave (LotR:TTT) |
On Choice
DISCLAIMER: Unless feeling pensive, thoughtful, or otherwise analytical, reading further on this entry could cause headache, drowsiness, and general confusion.
Several people have seen this before, but I like it, so I'll post it anyways...feel free to direct your other Blurty, LJ, or other buddies here to read if you think they'll like it.
For maximum effect, read in your best Morpheus voice from The Matrix
For more of a fun effect, picture me saying it in the trenchcoat and shades...Cort, you know what I'm talking about 8) Enjoy, and feel free to comment or curse me for giving you a headache ;)
I have a headache.
I did not choose to have this headache; it simply happened. If it just happened, without any freedom on my part to intervene, to have something else or nothing at all, I cannot be free.
If I am not free, I cannot choose. If I cannot choose, my path has been preordained before I drew my first breath; in fact, someone or something decided for me whether I would inhale at all.
If I cannot choose, however; if someone else decides everything for me, I “exist” only as a puppet, a plaything. I am but a pawn in a layout that must ultimately lead somewhere, unless it leads nowhere.
If there is a path this layout follows, however, someone or something must have lain that path, whether a fraction of a second or an eon ago.
If someone laid that path, they must have made a choice. They chose to make me do what I did, to have everyone else do what they did. Therefore, choices do exist.
If someone made a choice, and choices exist, then I too exist, for I am the product of a choice.
If I exist, and choices exist, I can make choices. If everything around me exists, everything I do is a choice, and I can do or experience anything I choose, except not choosing at all.
So if I refuse to choose an opinion on a subject, I have still made a choice.
That means I chose to have this headache; although I wish I could remember doing so. It may have seemed quite the novel idea at the time, but I find myself regretting it now.
There, I just made another choice: regretting choosing to have a headache. Neither of these choices, however, seem to stem from any form of logic or reason.
If choices are not logical, then they must come from emotion and passion, but emotion and passion are only words. We chose (logically!) To invent these words to describe our actions, especially ones that did not follow the flow of logic.
If emotion and passion do not exist, I cannot make a choice involving them, and if logic dictated their creation as words, then choices are logical.
Now I really have a headache.
If I did not consciously, logically choose to make my headache stronger, the choice must have been subconscious. Our subconscious, beyond human thought, is dictated by intense emotions. If our subconscious exists, then emotions exist, for they control it (if such a thing can be controlled).
If emotions and passions exist, if they are not just words, then we choose to view them as such. Their complexity makes them beyond our comprehension; therefore, we choose to ignore them and let them do their job.
By letting emotions and passions take over the process of choice, we free our “logical” minds from such a burden. But when we stand by a choice, support it, we use logic and reason. We call those choices our “beliefs,” our “morals.”
If we only use logic in relation to choices we consciously stand by, then a conscious, (sometimes-) logical choice is a belief. Our inner reactions, then, constitute the rest of our choices. Whether to breathe; how often; how deep; all these choices are subconscious.
Thus, to remove ourselves from this unending cycle of choice, we have to make a choice.
Suicide ends our existence, removing all choices.
Alcoholism removes us from reality; hence, it temporarily ends our existence.
Drug addiction removes us from reality as well, often for extended periods of time. It periodically ends our existence.
If we fall deep enough into addiction, we can reach the point of simultaneous existence and nonexistence: insanity. We are beyond reality, trapped in our own mind; therefore, we cannot choose. At the same time, our body exists, trapped in reality. It can make choices still, through our subconscious. Inhale, exhale; inhale, exhale.
The ultimate ender of choice, of course, is time. We all eventually succumb to its grasp.
But if we succumb to time, does time then choose, consciously or not, when our choices should expire?
That question, I leave to the next person with a headache. For now, mine is gone, and I choose to suspend my writings. An amazing thing, choice is.
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