You Have a Choice

Think Tank #1

How many times in life do we forget that we can do whatever the hell we want?

It’s something we don’t think about often, despite the fact that it’s probably the most important realization we can make. We wake up every morning on autopilot (probably later than we should have), embark on our morning commute, resentful of the fact that we ‘have’ to go to work. When we get there, we perform the same motions we always do, automatically, without thinking. We fill our downtime with the same idle pastimes that we always do: meaningless small-talk, mindless scrolling on our phones, maybe a few aimless trips to the bathroom or the water cooler or whatever, just to stretch our legs.

You make a thousand little decisions every day: what to say, how to react to a problem. Do you think about any of them?

The decision to wake up in the morning, to go, just like you do every other day—that was a decision.

The decision to ‘stick it out’ throughout the entire commute, to stay on the highway in bumper-to-bumper traffic instead of driving off, or on your slow, crowded train instead of getting off at the next stop and taking it in the opposite direction as far as it will go, just to do something different—that was your decision.

You don’t ‘have’ to do anything. What will actually happen if you don’t go to work tomorrow morning? The world won’t implode, the way your autopilot-mind thinks it will. You just won’t have any money.

Maybe you decide that you need the money. Maybe that’s the only thing that motivates you to continue. Great. You just made a conscious choice.

Now, knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing, and knowing what you want out of what you’re doing, you can think about it a little differently. And maybe, just maybe, you can start doing whatever you need to do to choose between two lesser evils in the future.

Maybe.

Live deliberately. Even if you choose not to change a single thing, never forget your own autonomy.