(Untitled)

[welladjustedrob]

In my life, as in yours, there have been bad decisions and good ones. Good experiences and bad ones. Inevitably these decisions and experiences are causally related, some directly and some more indirectly. They also do not exist separately, with good and bad strands running in parallel. There is only one long string of events. Sometimes it can

Comments

response part 2

[ghosttoboggan]

And then there's pitfall of interpreting our past in ways that can actually hurt us in the long run: distorted thinking, and the influence (and further interpretation of) overwhelming feelings or anxiety, to name a few. These can all impose further limits on our ability to see the larger context. When anticipating future decisions, we can scrutinize our possible choices, strive to be conscientious, proceed with with full commitment, and still end up disappointed. If our disappointment follows after we've made an important choice (or what seemed like an important choice), we may interpret the disappointment in several ways. When left in the wake of an upsetting experience, we're likewise compelled to interpretation. Again, there are many ways of interpreting our past. Because no one escapes disappointment and pain in life, I have to suspect that some "ways of interpretation" just lend themselves to "being able to pick ourselves up and get on with life." It's clear to me that some people have learned how to interpret in that way better than others. In my case, I seem to have been the sort who typically reacts to disappointment, to unease - to discomfort, really - in the most pessimistic, overgeneralized ways, often with a "default self-reproach." And I've only recently become aware of this tendency of mine. I've learned that certain personal "styles" of reacting to past and present experiences can slowly convince someone that whatever choices they make are irrelevant, and that they lack any real control over their lives. That kind of perspective is poison, but it's a poison some of us take in preference to dealing with life's pain. Sooner or later, though, we might notice (in horror) of what the poison's doing to us.

Now I want to move from specific back to general. Back to the idea of choices, and our awareness of choice. As you point out, "we say we have choices, and in an obvious way that is true..." There's something about your use of the word "obvious" that stirs me to thinking. It's as if you're saying that we can easily acknowledge the mere fact that we have choices to make in life, but that in itself isn't enough to bring us closer to a true awareness of what it means "to have choice." I've been getting the sense, lately, that an understanding of what's involved in a meaningful choice requires an acceptance of uncertainty. An acceptance of uncertainty requires that we refuse to think of "good choices" and "good experiences" as being incompatible with "something going wrong." Learning how to follow through with our plans in the face of uncertainty involves learning bravery and unlearning the habit of rigid thinking.