Choice and growing up
Read TIme – 5 min
Wandering Time – ∞
I think the only thing that comes with growing up is my ability to choose, or as I call it, a weapon called choice. I started to believe that only when I grew up, and everything except that which I get while growing up must be facade or fog that keeps me from making choices.
If this choice, this weapon of choice, this weapon called “choice” is not utilised by me, then I get annoyed, frustrated, agitated, and disoriented, and I become neurotic.
Now this comes in different shapes.
As this guy, Viktor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, says, the only thing I have, or that is under my control, is my reaction, and that reaction is also a choice. How I choose to react will set the tone of my future choices.
One very recent example that I can mention here is this. My nephew asked what it is like growing up. Is it more fun when I am in school, or more fun when I’m out of school, like, is it more fun to be a kid or to be grown up?
I answered that both have their own benefits and disadvantages. When I’m a kid, I don’t have to stress about anything. When I grow up, I get the choice to decide my own field, which is an advantage. I get to decide what I want to study.
From a broader point of view, I think what I mean to say now is that I didn’t understand what choice really is when I was a kid. All those years until the moment I got to decide, I was only learning what this tool called choice actually meant. When I grew up, I begin to use it in my life, by choosing my stream, what I want to study, how I want to live, what kind of clothes I want to wear, whether I want to love the people around me or not, how I want to walk, what kind of future I want to have, and where I want to live. I think this is the biggest and final thing that growing up gave me. It gave me choice. And when the opportunity to use this tool called choice comes and I don’t grab it, regret seeps in.
I know about it, I get agitated about it. Why that happens, I’m not sure. I just know that I really want to think about it, and I am thinking about it right now.
Can I say that during all those years when I learned to understand this tool but failed to use it at the perfect opportunity, my mind tells me that my whole life was a waste? It sounds very corny. I don’t think that would be the correct way of saying it, as it doesn’t make sense in my head at this moment.
I think that as I grew up, I began to ask the question: what is there to my life? Maybe that is a universal question that everyone goes through. I’m not sure about that, but when I ask this question to myself and realize, no, let me rephrase that.
When I am a kid and following what is taught to me, the information being passed down by adults, I am mostly consuming information rather than using choice. I hardly know how to use it, or perhaps I don’t know how to use it in a more progressive and constructive way. So I can conclude that I didn’t yet know how to use that tool.
Now coming back to what I was saying: when I ask myself this universal question about what there is to my life as I grew up?
This question can also come in this form. Is there anything else to my life than this? Is my life going to be this all the time? Is my life going to be just this?
Maybe while I grow up, I also came to this realization: man, all this time I was living for someone else. Maybe then I didn’t know how to exercise that choice or didn’t know how to use that tool I call choice.
Another thought :
One day I realised that I was just following orders and old customs or traditions, that day I questioned whether I have nothing in my hands or whether I just do the things I am told the way I am supposed to do. Do I not have anything that will help me do the things I want to do? And I realised the importance of this tool called choice and its existence.
From there on, the more I started using that tool, the better I got at it in terms of feeling good internally and feeling fulfilled internally. And it’s not like the more I use this tool, the sharper it gets. I don’t think it’s like that. This is a quite funny tool where the edge stays the same throughout life. I can’t sharpen it.
Every choice I make is going to be as difficult as the last one. Even more so, it could be more tough than the last one. It’s just that I get braver to face the consequences of the choices I make, or I become brave to face the consequences of when I use this tool.
As this guy, Viktor Frankl, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, says, the only thing I have, or that is under my control, is my reaction, and that reaction is also a choice. How I choose to react will set the tone of my future choices.
One very recent example that I can mention here is this. My nephew asked what it is like growing up. Is it more fun when I am in school, or more fun when I’m out of school, like, is it more fun to be a kid or to be grown up?
I answered that both have their own benefits and disadvantages. When I’m a kid, I don’t have to stress about anything. When I grow up, I get the choice to decide my own field, which is an advantage. I get to decide what I want to study.
From a broader point of view, I think what I mean to say now is that I didn’t understand what choice really is when I was a kid. All those years until the moment I got to decide, I was only learning what this tool called choice actually meant. When I grew up, I begin to use it in my life, by choosing my stream, what I want to study, how I want to live, what kind of clothes I want to wear, whether I want to love the people around me or not, how I want to walk, what kind of future I want to have, and where I want to live. I think this is the biggest and final thing that growing up gave me. It gave me choice. And when the opportunity to use this tool called choice comes and I don’t grab it, regret seeps in.
I know about it, I get agitated about it. Why that happens, I’m not sure. I just know that I really want to think about it, and I am thinking about it right now.
Can I say that during all those years when I learned to understand this tool but failed to use it at the perfect opportunity, my mind tells me that my whole life was a waste? It sounds very corny. I don’t think that would be the correct way of saying it, as it doesn’t make sense in my head at this moment.
I think that as I grew up, I began to ask the question: what is there to my life? Maybe that is a universal question that everyone goes through. I’m not sure about that, but when I ask this question to myself and realize, no, let me rephrase that.
When I am a kid and following what is taught to me, the information being passed down by adults, I am mostly consuming information rather than using choice. I hardly know how to use it, or perhaps I don’t know how to use it in a more progressive and constructive way. So I can conclude that I didn’t yet know how to use that tool.
Now coming back to what I was saying: when I ask myself this universal question about what there is to my life as I grew up?
This question can also come in this form. Is there anything else to my life than this? Is my life going to be this all the time? Is my life going to be just this?
Maybe while I grow up, I also came to this realization: man, all this time I was living for someone else. Maybe then I didn’t know how to exercise that choice or didn’t know how to use that tool I call choice.
Another thought :
One day I realised that I was just following orders and old customs or traditions, that day I questioned whether I have nothing in my hands or whether I just do the things I am told the way I am supposed to do. Do I not have anything that will help me do the things I want to do? And I realised the importance of this tool called choice and its existence.
From there on, the more I started using that tool, the better I got at it in terms of feeling good internally and feeling fulfilled internally. And it’s not like the more I use this tool, the sharper it gets. I don’t think it’s like that. This is a quite funny tool where the edge stays the same throughout life. I can’t sharpen it.
Every choice I make is going to be as difficult as the last one. Even more so, it could be more tough than the last one. It’s just that I get braver to face the consequences of the choices I make, or I become brave to face the consequences of when I use this tool.