More than often, we don’t choose to see, do, speak or hear what truly exists…but to see what others want to show us, do what others want us to do, speak what others want us to say and hear only what others want us to hear.
‘Making a Choice’, is not as simple as it sounds. At a situation when a ‘choice’ really matters, we tend to get influenced by the circumstances, our past experiences, our fears, our frame of references, or our aspirations. While ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are subjective, choices really are not. All one needs is to be conscious of the consequences ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ of every choice they make.
Many a times, I hear people say ‘I didn’t have another choice’. Well, I beg to differ… WE ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE… Choosing to Choose the choice we have is another choice we make. What it really means is that we need to be more conscious of being aware of our choices and ensuring we are the owners of the choices we make and not choose to allow others to make a choice for us.
For eg. If I say, ‘I couldn’t read medicine because my Dad didn’t want me to’. Here it seems like my Dad made the choice for me. The interesting underlying question is – ‘who chose to go by my Dad’s choice?’ Whatever may be the reason, the choice was mine.
The famous psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankyl gave an enlightening definition to Choices in his autobiography ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ quoting:
Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way’.
