the conflict of choice
For the many things which make us human, choice and the unpredictability of which is amongst those which make us distinguishable from machines. Free will, the gift of God, or if you do not believe in God, it is a nature bestowed upon us accidentally to choose freely what we want. Presaging disaster, depression, discontent and destruction is the cumulo-nimbus of the choice to love, give, take, learn, and many other decisions we make in our lives. It takes one so much to realize the amount of decisions we make every day, ranging from when to ignore the alarm clock, to when to pick up the fork and spoon, the very minute decisions that we overlook. Aside all these small decisions, there are more important ones, like university of choice, career path, even the choice to marry. Albeit the thousands of decisions which span the spectrum in the scale of importance, they are a tad dull, uninteresting, and irrelevant in most of our lives. After all, what is the power of choice if it is taken for granted? Or rather, the influence of the opposite when we never knew of the grass on the other side. A man never knew of defeat until he knows what it is to win.
Amongst the many struggles we adolescents go through is to break free from our parents. It is the power to have some control over your own life, which is absolutely needed and required when your age increases. Many of us complain when our parents do not allow us to do this or that. Many of us complain when people restrict our freedom and our ability to exercise free will. Wonder why so many complain of NS? "It's a waste of time" is the most common complaint. Wonder why so many complain of IB? It's the same comment, just that they don't feel it that hard because the sacrifice is less. But do you mean by free will and freedom when you cannot exercise it in times when free will is restricted? Just as a light shines brighter in the night than in the day, your freedom of choice is best exhibited when you are restricted in your ability to express it.
I am no blind patriot or anything like that. The greatest act of freedom and free will is exhibited in your heart and mind, an area so dodgy that few would be able to break. Your heart and mind is ultimately the places which you decide to do something, to learn something isnt it. Ultimately, it is self contradiction when one complains of the lack of freedom when he doesnt decide to make things happen for himself in his heart and mind in the first place. (ie. He complains of people restricting his freedom. This implies that he really yearns for freedom. However, the very act of complaint and doing nothing about it reduces him to an average, mediocre person because he did nothing to free himself from the trap he gave himself). The biggest prisons you put yourself into is not the physical prison. It is a mental prison, a self perpetuating cycle, a self fulfilling propecy that things are not going to change and the complaint from you that things should not be that way goes nowhere.
Jean-Dominique Bauby is an ELLE journalist, very rich, raking in tens of thousands till he got diagnosed with a lock-in syndrome. It is a condition which the patient is mentally and clinically stable, just that he cannot execute any voluntary movements, except for the blinking of his eyes. With only one eye blinking, the window of his soul, he wrote a book, penning down his imaginations embossing the power and freedom of the human mind.
Freedom and choice is ultimately something we want to have for ourselves. I am not talking about the more superficial things like clothes to wear and stuff. Its because they are the extrinsic motivations which will run out of fuel as long as the source of pleasure runs out. And it is very easy for these sources of motivations to run out. For example, not having enough money, for transport, clothes, food etc. These extrinsic motivations are in a way superficial because first: You cannot control them second: You cannot predict the certainty of them happening third: It controls your life in a certain way.
Intrinsic motivation is an inspiration which comes within you. It does not occur naturally, and you have to will yourself to be motivated intrinsically. It is the greatest and highest stage of freedom and exercise of choice for the simple fact that you control your own life. Taking value out of a very unpleasant situation should never be a restricting factor of growth. Being locked up in a cage should never be one's deterrent for learning. It is, again for the simple fact that, these things do not control your life, you do. The exercise of free will is the most powerful in places where free will and freedom is least expected, or when many other freedoms are restricted. However much they say, you always have a choice between EVERYTHING, because it is the most difficult for a person to steal your heart and mind. If you were to be like one of the mediocre people who resign and complain to their fate, you will forever be stuck in that trend, not just because the others put you in that position, but because you refuse to control your own life. And until the day you control your life, you will continue to let these things shape you the selfish and destructive way.
