Choice comes from responsibility
It’s time to wax philosophical here; it’s what happens when I don’t get enough sleep after a while, and sometimes it’s also the reason I don’t get enough sleep.
I’m perplexed that I’ve already been through a major existential crisis despite the fact that I’m not even twenty-one years of age yet, and am in the throes of another philosophical crisis—one dealing with the freedom of choice, or free will. For the longest time, I’ve denied my actual belief in Fate, but argued my position without using sound reasoning that Fate doesn’t exist. I was right, with an asterisk attached.
Going back to my existential epiphany, the irony of arguing that something doesn’t exist is the fact that to be able to argue about its existence means that it must be thought about and defined for the argument to have any merit. Therefore everything exists as an idea—even if it’s nothing more than an idea. Pink unicorns, for example, exist as an idea. You can think about them and you can define them, so they only don’t exist to the people who don’t know about the idea of them. As my not-so-old adaptation to the old adage goes, “Ignorance is bliss, until you’re smart enough to understand that. Then it’s too late.” Ultimately, my life experiences add up to create an ever-evolving filter through which I see the world, but the problem lies within the fact that the only way for my “filter” to be completely unbiased would be for me to experience everything all at once. Because I can never experience the infinite in an instant, my “filter” is tinted over time, with each layer giving a biased interpretation of the next experience, which is then added. Unless life is viewed with absolute objectivity, the bias of the filter can quickly shift in one direction with an almost irreversible force. (Although, due to the fact that I had learned of other ideas prior to learning of “objectivity,” my understanding of the idea itself surely became tinted every so slightly, thus becoming questionable, and quite subjective, proving in an objective manner that there is no objectivity.)
So based on the apparent fact that my filter will always be biased based on my experiences, the idea of “Fate” (or rather, my learned definition of Fate) is my responsibility, and therefore my choice. I was right in saying that Fate doesn’t exist in a manner to independently influence my life. However, the asterisk is that Fate still exists as an idea, along with all those pink unicorns and other mythical figures. And ideas do pull some weight in the tinting of each person’s “filter.” The trick is taking responsibility for the tint and color-correcting it to come back to a neutral bias.
That said, happiness is simply knowing that whatever choice you make is the right choice because you made it. It is the act of taking full responsibility for your every thought, your every action, your every moment alive. Wrap your head around that (or not)—it’s your choice.
