The Choice That You Own
“The choice is yours.”
At any given point in time, you see the million possibilities forking forth, all branching out each from the things you can do and the things you wouldn’t. Each takes on a different route and leads to a different end. Oh, the power we hold with our free will, unfathomable! We could totally change the world with this one choice, dammit.
Er, really?
Of late I’ve come to figure out the way things work around here. People, they often fit into a loosely defined “template”, sorta like a fingerprint with almost 80% accuracy - too complicated to not be explained off in two words, but rcognisable enough to form and fit into a category of their own. Listening for patterns, watching your eyes move as you speak, your pauses, your little gestures, they all make sense to me. You’re a wonder. You may speak two sentences but I hear five, and depending on how accurate probabilistic determinability may be, I see the path we take from this point onwards, our intricate dance at best ten steps into the future.
But without a solid base and without a parchment of evidence to hold between my fingers you to see, this prediction ain’t nothing but speculation; the 0.1 percent chance of it being all wrong glistens in blood red, brighter than all the 99.9 percent positive affirmitives combined. If reading between the lines is something of a talent then you might very well be hallucinating truths out of oblivion, who’s to say otherwise? After all, hallucination is for the schizophrenic - the problem with patients is they don’t know they’re patients!
You see, this is where the trouble begins. The more you see, the more you are responsible for not taking yourself seriously and not acting upon your suspicions because well, others still have the liberty of slipping away claiming that they never in their wildest dreams had a sneaking suspicion about anything at all - but what’s your excuse! You, you sneaky one, you’d feared and even expected this all along, and now it’s gone and happened. You shrug, look down, put your hands in your pocket and let our a loose laugh, of course you aren’t responsible in any way for what happened, it’s not that you could’ve prevented it right? Who would listen to me! What am I, god?
But you can’t push it down much longer, it comes up and out searing your throat and burning your nostrils. It is on you, remember the trolley problem? The choice to not change the current course of the train is as much of a choice as one to delibrately push it over to the other track. You probably aren’t god, but you could see it. And darling, you let it happen!
You might now keep this at the back of your mind, a burden, hoping to prevent it from going stale and turning into regret by actively looking out for the next opportunity to grab it and flip your burden into a lesson, another principle to live by.
Now, my friend, with this decison you’re now in for a sizzlin’ ride as you square your sholders, lock in, and dive head first right into the game. For every step forward you play a step backward, for every high note you play two notes low. In your mind, you maintain balance- perfect, as all things should be.
Until it collapses. You stop dead in your tracks, stunned. The little intricate dance comes to an ugly halt, as the words “game over” float over your head, in front of you. The killing move has been played. The very move that you’d entered the game to prevent being played, has been played. Everything was going on as you’d expected, you were keeping it in bay as you’d been compelled to, what went wrong!
Everything that you ever did, all the moves that you ever played… was I nothing but a mere rock on the path of the gushing stream? you wonder. It’s almost like taking a different route to the same destination. Every time I played a move, I nudged it even more towards its end. Its end.. its scripted end. Something about having a choice… what was it again?
Sigh, somebody remind me please.
And the cycle continues.
You dare think?
Well then, go on, act on it!
You ain’t making a move?
Oh look, you lost! Who’s at fault now, ey?
What’s that, you tried acting on it but couldn’t? Aw too bad, TRY HARDER then!
Sometimes I wonder what life is all about. Life is made infinitely more complicated by this ability of ours, to think. Think, learn, predict, feel, remember. So many variables, so many possibilities. What is right, what is wrong?
But then, I wouldn’t have it any other way, you know? Wouldn’t give up the world for it! This gamem is what makes life what it is, after all. Life is all but an experience. The dance. Our unique dance, right from the first to the very last breath the body takes. You can see, see with the eyes of a painter and feel, feel with the heart of a poet. You are human, not some buck-beaked duck. You can think, not just live by and die like mould on a stale bread.
Thus, even after knowing that what I do might barely even cause as much as a leaf to rustle, knowing that eveything that I do might end up being washed completely from the face of history, written over completely by someone else with a pen of darker ink over my dried and fading ink, well, I’ll continue trying.
Ye know, its a little like the curse of being Batman. I’ve always admired Batman. No, I won’t pretend to know the lore- disclaimer, I ain’t the geek. But see, batman, is a guy who many deem mentally ill, sick, stuck in his ways, doing some bullshit for god knows what purpose. He’s got his principles, and he’ll die by them, regardless of everything. He just won’t tire. He won’t not show up today, excuse himself just this one night. He isn’t going to let it pass for one last time and pledge to do better next time. He isn’t asking you for your help, your support, nothing. He isn’t obliged by anyone else to do what he does. And yet, he does it. He’s got a strong sense of duty, and that’s what keeps him alive. Once the task’s over, he expects nothing from you- no praise, no acknowledgement. He is, simply, unstoppable. Night after night, he continues doing what his conscience tells him to do. Can you imagine how powerful that makes him? Nothing can break him. His purpose drives him. He is sane to the extent that the insane consider one of their own.
That’s him.
… and, that’s me. At a tiny, microscopic, almost invisible scale. But it’s there. Somewhere. Eh.