Making Choices
Freely Choosing Your Life Experiences
within the Realities of Your Inner and Outer Worlds
Robert Caldwell
Henry Sloane Coffin, a pre-eminent churchman at the turn of the
century (and grandfather of the peace activist William Sloane
Coffin) was riding his horse side by side with the powerful minister
of one of the nation's most prominent churches, an advocate of
predestination. With pride and confidence he said, "Henry, it
was ordained before the beginning of time that you would be our
speaker for our centennial celebration today." Coffin, who had
dedicated his career to trumpeting individual responsibility and
free choice replied, "Are your sure?" "Most certainly!" came the
quick reply. "Well, if that's so, then I won't." And Coffin immediately
turned his horse around and went home.
Fundamental in our self-concept and attitude is the assumption
that we can choose our environments, our experiences, our actions.
From the Bill of Rights to Sinatra's My Way, we create guidelines and celebrations of the individual's entitlement
to free choice. Humankind is distinguished from other species
by its breadth of choices. Our political maneuverings, our development
of mental and artistic capacities, our commitments to better health
are all ways we attempt to gain more control in the choices we
make. "Give me liberty or give me death" is not only a singular
expression of human courage, but a simple statement of the reality
of being, for not to be free to choose is to be "dead" to the
variety of stimulations and behaviors that make life worth living.
RUNNING OUT OF CHOICES
The worst thing that can happen to us physically, mentally and
emotionally is to lose our freedom--to run out of choices. It
is no happenstance that one of the most poignant novels of our
generation includes the word: "choice"--Sophie's Choice. Sophie is given the emotionally intolerable "choice" by a Nazi
physician to decide which of her two children should live or die.
She makes the decision, as she must if she is to save the life
of even one of her children; ultimately, in inconsolable remorse,
she takes her own life.
Though our choices are not so elemental or dramatic as Sophie's,
we nevertheless often feel we are tyrannized by necessity and
have no viable or enlivening options available to us. Here are
some of the examples of dead-ends persons confront:
Career. Marie (Names and identifying data have been changed.) languishes
in her job as a lawyer in a government agency. A single mother,
the flex-time policy enables her both to earn an adequate living
to satisfy her lifestyle and be with her infant daughter at the
most needful moments. Though she is bored and finds no personal
reward in her work, she "has no choice" but to continue.
Relationship. Howard and Anne have finished college, and after the tortures
and ecstasies of years of courtship--including coming to an acceptance
of Anne's heart condition which could mean permanent limited mobility--they
set a wedding date. In the meantime, Howard, away for an extended
business training program, falls in love with a colleague. Howard
imagines that if he does not go through with the wedding, Anne
will never marry anyone. Though his heart is with his new love,
as duty and faithfulness were bred into his being along with the
alphabet, he feels he has "no choice" but to make a marriage he
foresees as a lifetime cross to bear.
Family. Katherine, when she was a child, at the direction of her widowed
father, visited her elderly aunt as a matter of course every Sunday
afternoon. From her training Katherine surmised that Sunday afternoons
were for family visiting. For the whole of her married life, she
dutifully took her husband to see her sister and aunt every Sunday
afternoon. She had "no choice." (Doubtless, the sister and aunt
were possessed of complementary "no choice" expectations.)
Politics. Edward was of the eighth generation of Southern Democrats. During
his studies toward an MBA he began to think that Republican fiscal
theory was at least worth considering. Mentioning his explorations
at a family gathering, he induced a storm of criticism from his
seniors. He found justification for remaining an "enthusiastic"
Democrat indefinitely. He was sure he had "no choice."
Philosophy. In Stardust Memories, one of Woody Allen's existentialist films, he is trapped inside
a train filled with dour, depressed, silent, foreboding men and
women. He peers through the window to the club car of the train
parked alongside of him. There, glamorous and festive people are
exuberantly partying and toasting one another in high good will.
Allen wonders why he is on his train of depressed souls and not
the other, but he is literally locked-in and has "no choice" but
to be where he is.
So many times we are confronted by the "no choice" dead-end, that
we may indeed come to perceive of ourselves as being without a
viable choice, of having every observable option either doing
nothing for us or making things worse--like the rope around a
torture victim when his hands are linked to his neck and every
effort to free himself only tightens the stranglehold. Clearly,
being without choices threatens our self-definition, our existence
itself.
ACKNOWLEDGING LIMITATIONS ON CHOICES
One of the central reasons that the issue of choice is so difficult
for us is that we are so often unrealistic about the scope and
power of the choices we actually have. We are as much defined
by our limits as by our powers. As groundwork for preparing to
make more effective choices, I believe it can be helpful to begin
with a brief and direct survey of some of the ways our choices
are limited:
...By Biology. Studies of identical twins raised apart demonstrate what direct
observation has inferred all along--that persons reflect the styles
and values of their families even when they have no contact with
them. Though the nature/nurture debates persists, there is increasing
evidence that we are much more determined than we like to think
by what is transmitted in DNA.
...By the External World. If we wish to eat we will work, steal, beg, get lucky or be given
to by the beneficence of others. These are the choices. There
are so many demands coming into us simply by the fact that we
are present on this planet: the bank, the landlord, the law, the
plumbing, the car, the judgments of our friends and enemies, the
needs of our parents and children. There are so many expectations
to be met, and even when we attempt to meet some need of our own,
we often discover a new set of demands.
...By the Learnings of Childhood. A middle-age woman told a counselor this story: When she was
five years old, she was exploring inquisitively her mother's bedroom
and she came upon a set of false teeth. Having heard somewhere
of such an unusual thing, she turned brightly to her mother and
said, "Mommie, are these your false teeth?" The mother did, indeed,
wear dentures, but out of what must have been acute embarassment
at being "found-out", she replied, "No, I don't have false teeth."
The storyteller vividly remembered the moments following: She
looked back at the teeth as she dealt with the very troubling
decision of how to hold on to her mother's approval and yet honor
her own perception. Being a young, dependent child, she settled
for the inevitable and said to herself, "Oh, these must not be
false teeth." Established in her at that moment was what was to
become a pattern of not believing in her own experience, thus
handicapping her ability to make self-confident choices.
The messages, overt and covert, given to us by our families and
other caregivers remain with us through life and constrict our
possibilities for making choices. They have established something
like a hypnotic field of commands and guidance systems that cause
us to believe we cannot do other than that which we have been
taught.
COPING WITH THREATS TO FREE CHOICE
In order to deal with the inevitable choices that face us every
day, we have created many different programs and rules, ingenious
and plain, demonic and saintly. There are half-choices as when one doesn't want to go to a party, so he shows up an
hour late. There are substitute choices, as when one can't win the man of her dreams, so she marries "rich"
to "show him." There are blaming choices, as when one accuses others of blocking him of what he would
otherwise have attained. There are fantasy choices, as when one
makes her decisions according to her idealized wishes rather than
the reality of her circumstances. There are victim choices, as when one lays the blame for his unhappiness on another. And,
there are empowered choices when one looks not at what she ought to do, wishes to do, or
regrets not doing--but to what she wants to do from within a sense of her whole self.
MAKING EFFECTIVE CHOICES
Freedom to choose is a great ideal and hope, but a state of being
and achievement often elusive. However, it is possible. There are four steps which I consider essential to
develop a life wherein we live by our own creative choices:
Know What You Want. Half a lifetime ago, before I was a psychotherapist, I was a
minister. In the midst of prolonged struggle about the suitability
of that role for me, one day, in an unusual state of clarity,
I asked myself, "What am I doing in my work that I truly like?"
I searched my mind and found two things: I received powerful satisfactions
from being with people at critical times in their lives--birth,
death, marriage, personal crisis; and I was stimulated in leading
small group discussion around psychological themes. Soon a new
awareness crept over me--I was spending less than ten percent
of my working time doing what I liked. If I were to live with
less stress and more purposefulness, I would have to make some
serious adjustments in my profession. Out of the insight that
I was not doing what my inner self wanted, and with a lot of work
in the transition, I eventually came to a new vocation in which
the majority of my time I was able to do what I liked most--working
in depth with individuals and groups. Society calls it "psychotherapy;"
for me, it's a structure for responding to my mind's deeper necessity.
Becoming aware of and claiming what we truly want takes us deep
within.. "Wants" scare us, and some of us are almost phobic at
the possibility of acknowledging them. They may be "too many,"
or "too earthy," or "too unacceptable," or "too selfish," or "too
difficult" even to consider. In leading couples workshops, I find
one of the most difficult exercises for partners is to ask them
to exchange a list of "wants" with one another. Often, couples
would rather divorce than expose to each other their honest desires.
Jack Kornfield suggests there are three steps in Buddhist psychology
for attending to the more profound dimensions of our minds. First
we tell our story, giving the external rendition of our experience;
second, we may move into expressing the feelings that are within
the story; third, if we remain in contact with our inner self
we will come to the fears that confront us. To this schema, I
would add a fourth, the realm of "wants"--that core part of the
self where we know and express who we are, what we need, what
we must have if we are to be whole. We cannot make choices that
matter for us unless they are choices that satisfy the "wants"
of this essential self.
SEEKING WHAT IS POSSIBLE
One of the most outrageously misleading promises often made within
the humanistic movement is "We can do anything we wish." We can't,
of course. But learning to discern what is possible and to be willing to accept the "possible" as our path
demands a development of awareness of our real, not imagined,
capacities, even though they may be considerably less impressive
than what we might have wanted to think.
A few moments of looking straight at ourselves is sufficient to
dismiss such obviously unavailable choices as those beyond our
mental or physical capacities--we can't lift an elephant, compose
like Mozart, or punch out George Foreman. However, most of the
choices we face day-by-day are not so emphatically impossible.
In our actual and ordinary lives many of our habits and established
patterns, for all practical purposes, make it "impossible" to
choose alternatives.
In Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Spielberg's magical film blend of human and cartoon characters,
Roger is in serious trouble as he is hunted by an evil monster
who has the power to kill "Toons" by melting them down in acid.
Roger, knowing that his nemesis is in the next room, tries to
remain quiet so as not to be discovered. He is succeeding till
his pursuer uses the ultimate weapon, one that a "Toon" cannot
resists. He taps out "Shave-and-a-hair-cut!" and Roger can no
longer restrain himself; he begins dancing with the gusto that
is his nature as an comic entertainer.
Even as Roger Rabbit has no control over his actions once he hears
a particular rhythmic pattern, so also do we have no control under
certain conditions. Though ordinary reasonable thinking might
declare we live in a world replete with choices, actual experience
indicate we have fewer choices than we like to believe. a serious
weight-watcher knows that with Haagen Dazs around, he will eat
it; good students know that if they associate with other "A" students
their grades will stay up; police know that if persons have guns,
they will use them.
We do not suddenly and magically make ourselves into new and unfamiliar
beings. Life is so constructed that experiences move from this
moment to the next, from this space/time in an uninterrupted stream.
The future experience is next to the present one and is created
out of the present one. There is no escaping this. We bring all
that we have ever been--felt, thought, seen, heard, imagined--to
the experience of this moment as we move from the "here" into
the "there." The only real choices we have are those about the
next possible thing.
You may wish to get married, but so far, no luck. As marriage
is dependent on environmental co-operation, you cannot simply
choose to marry. But you may be able to bring yourself to do some
things novel for you--e.g., singles-programs, video-dating, inviting
friends to matchmake, intentionally pushing through your shyness.
You will have then discovered empowered choice.... You may not
be able to visit your parents for the obligatory summer vacation
without feeling like a pained and frustrated fifteen-year-old.
But you may be able to shorten your stay two days, take along
some of your more pressing work, and keep your mate by your side
in all "close" conversations--thus remaining at least partially
connected with your adult self. You will have then discovered
empowered choice.
Sometimes my desk piles so high with the clutter of unfinished
business that I don't have room to lay my glasses and, feeling
so overwhelmed, hardly want to see anyway. Over the years I have
learned I do have an option for coping that works. I sit upright
at my desk, check for vital signs, take a deep breath, and like
an "MC" putting his hand into a raffle box, randomly choose an
item and follow its demand through to completion. I repeat this
process until the desk is clean. I have no more than begun the
first task than I feel a great inner whoosh of relief and energy.
I am, finally, doing what needs to be done. I have unclogged the
logjam. I am doing the next thing. In this focused state of mind I do not have to deal with all
the complexities and pitfalls at once, but take only a step at
a time to finish what I can.
PRACTICING MINDFULNESS
Mindfulness is the ground out of which freedom of choice emerges
as figure. Mindfulness has many names: "awareness," "paying attention,"
"listening to the inner-self," "being centered," "being in-touch,"
"living in the spirit," knowing where it's at." Mindfulness is
the sixth sense, bringing the other five into heightened perception
and integration. Mindfulness is not judgmental; it knows no "oughts;"
it has intense interest in life itself.
Mindfulness is manifest in: ...the star quarterback who sees three
receivers down the field when his backup would have seen one.
...the master artist who sees dozens of variations in a shade
of green when a novice would detect only a few. ...the undaunted
adventurer who can think of several more 'great' restaurants when
his preference for the evening is closed and his companion has
become depressed by this single disappointment. ...the person
who is appreciative of whatever life offers, knowing that each
new moment brings new data about one's self in the world, new
stimulations for the senses, new possibilities for our perceiving
and expressing ourselves as wonders and energies of past, present,
and future.
In the life-process of practicing mindfulness we discover that
we are better able to know our options and more successfully able
to confront and experience our actual choices. Out of mindfulness
we come to know what we want, what is possible, and the sensitivity
to be aware of whether or not we are in a state of positive energy.
For mindfulness is nature's own bio-feedback system, letting us
monitor the ups and down or our experience--and, as in bio-feedback,
the awareness itself becomes healing.
TRUSTING YOU BODY/MIND EXPERIENCE
Trusting our organism--our actual (not ideal) body/mind experience--is
the active commitment we can make to living-out our mindfulness.
Such trust is the experience-based belief that our organism, this
remarkable creation of cosmic mind and biological evolution is
already moving in the stream of its own potential. Our task is
to keep its path clear. From this perspective are terms such as
"self-fulfillment," "self-regulation," and "self-actualization"
born.
Trusting our organism means that our sense of the choices we have
comes from within. Choices arise not as something we "should"
do, or even that which is "intelligent" to do, but as an expressive possibility of the self. Honest choices of the self are not from the outside-in
("You should." "Reason dictates that...") but from the inside-out
("The inner voice." "The felt-sense.") In our moments of high
mindfulness and trust our whole being is resonating to the interplay
of the rhythms between self and environment. The line between
choosing and being chosen, between initiating and being led becomes
softer. For the person who is most profoundly paying attention
to self and world, the tensions of choice are greatly lessened
and are replaced by a yielding to and cooperating with the processes
of life. Coming and going, laughing and crying, negotiating one's
will and yielding to another's will becomes a function of knowing
one's visions and following one's promptings.
Our organism is always attempting to bring our self back into
balance with the ongoing flow of life. It is as though we were
riding a canoe down-river. If we hit some rock here, or a rush
of turbulent water there, our business is to stay aware of the
pressure on our boat and body and to make the counter-balancing
moves. With a developed level of competence we can have a long
enjoyable and safe journey. Without it, we may indeed, go under.
When I was a kid, a trip to the doctor too often meant "getting
a shot," and that was one very unhappy childhood activity. Until
a few years ago "shots" continued to be a special pain. In the
course of my new learnings, I began to hear about the crucial
importance of that most omnipresent sign of life--breathing. I
learned that kids yell on roller coasters to release their energy
and relax the constriction of their bodies brought by fear. I
borrowed this idea for shot-taking. I began to let out a full
(relatively silent) exhale as the nurse pricked my skin. I haven't
had a bad inoculation since. I had discovered a simple way (remembering
to breathe) to trust my organism to help it recover its natural
flow which had been interrupted by the threat of the needle to
which my body had tensed, unwittingly compounding my pain.
CHOOSING CREATIVELY
Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being writes that, in a given situation, we can make only one decision;
so we never know whether our second of third choice would have
been any better than our first. There is no second guessing. Each
choice, because it is final, because it cannot be erased, because
it creates the unique moment and occasion for the next choice,
is a declarative statement of the self and an act of hope, despair,
or indifference about the possibilities, the consequences, the
karma of what will follow.
In a profound sense there are no "right" and "wrong" choices,
but only actions which advance us toward further experiences.
Each choice is like a bar of music in the self-composed symphony
that is our life--and the bar may be well or poorly formed. The
well-composed parts may be thought of as those which come out
of awareness of what has gone before, knowledge of the notes and
phrasing available in our individual repertory, and sensitivity
to how the audience will hear and respond to our expression. The
poorly composed may be disjointed, disharmonious, manifest little
sense of awareness of the whole, and evidence only fragments of
our potential.
We choose raggedly and resentfully, going from dissonant to entangled
to aborted experiences, or we choose with the native energies
of our being, balancing them with the learned patterns of mind
and the demands of the world. But, always we choose. Where our choosing come from is what matters for the
quality of our lives.
In the final scene of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt, George Babbitt, the archetype for the self-absorbed, success-obsessed,
American money-hustler speaks (His has been an empty lifetime--the
best that could be said for him is that he had leaned how not
to live.) supportingly to his son. Babbitt backs him in making
a marriage that everyone, except himself, is opposed to and in choosing a career as a mechanic rather than going to college.
His comment offers a succinct expression of a life with no real
choices: "I've never done a single thing I wanted to in my whole
life." Following that sad self-commentary, Lewis gives Babbitt
a self-redeeming word as he puts forward his confidence in his
son's abilities to make self-respecting and courageous choices
on his own: "I get a kind of sneaking pleasure out of the fact
that you knew what you wanted to do and did it...don't be scared
of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor of yourself...Go ahead.
The world is yours!"
Such is the path and the power of choice-making from the inner-self--from
knowing what you want, trusting yourself and your life process,
moving through fear, and doing the next thing all the way.
Robert Caldwell, M. Div, C.P.C. has a private practice in Individual,
Couple, and Group Psychotherapy in Bethesda, MD. He can be reached
at 301-652-6180. |