The Matter of Choice

Workshop for self-reflection and self-exploration

This workshop is a space to reflect on the matter of choice, what do we associate it with. How does it manifest itself in our daily lives, in our professional and personal lives, in our emotional lives, where is it most present with us?

What are the choices we make or have already made and was there something that happened to us that we did not choose? How do we live those experiences?

Are our attitudes, moods and emotions, values and beliefs, a matter of choice? 

Looking at the choices we make, how do they unfold in our personal history, but also in the history of the previous generations in our families, what is the greater context of choices (cultural, historical, etc.), where do those choices lead us? Is there a way to know it? How do we deal with the uncertainty as we must choose without knowing in advance about the outomce and consequences.

We might touch upon the topics of existential choice, conscious choice, values, time, comparisons we make, inner consent, sorrow, regret or joy, forgiveness and gratitude, freedom and responsibility.

The workshop has two sessions of two hours each, with one week in-between of them.

Some things to contemplate on:

“Life is a sum of all your choices” ~ Pythagoras

Lewis Carroll’s Alice tells the Cheshire Cat: “I don’t much care where … so long as I get somewhere.“

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night 

Theodor Geisel / Dr. Seuss “What Pet Should I Get?”

The cat?
Or the dog?
The kitten?
The pup?
Oh boy! 
It is something
to make a mind up.

Then I looked at Kay.
I said, “What will we do?
I like all the pets that I see.
So do you.
We have to pick ONE pet
and pick it out soon.

You know Mother told us
to be back by noon.”
“I will do it right now.
I will do it!” I said.
“I will make up the mind
that is up in my head.”

The dog…? Or the rabbit…?
The fish…? Or the cat…?
I picked one out fast,
and that that was that.

Søren Kierkegaard Either / Or: A Frangment of Life 

If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or if you do not marry, you will regret both; whether you marry or you do not marry, you will regret both. Laugh at the world’s follies, you will regret it; weep over them, you will also regret it; if you laugh at the world’s follies or if you weep over them, you will regret both; whether you laugh at the world’s follies or you weep over them, you will regret both. Believe a girl, you will regret it; if you do not believe her, you will also regret it; if you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you will regret both; whether you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you will regret both. If you hang yourself, you will regret it; if you do not hang yourself, you will regret it; if you hang yourself or you do not hang yourself, you will regret both; whether you hang yourself or you do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This, gentlemen, is the sum of all practical wisdom.

Maria Popova

We, none of us, choose the century we are born in, or the skin we are born in, or the chromosomes we are born with. We don’t choose the incredibly narrow band of homeostasis within which we can be alive at all — in bodies that die when their temperature rises above 40 degrees Celsius or drops below 20, living on a planet that would be the volcanic inferno of Venus or the frigid desert of Mars if it were just a little closer to or farther from its star.

And yet, within these narrow parameters of being, nothing appeals to us more than the notion of freedom — the feeling that we are free, that intoxicating illusion with which we blunt the hard fact that we are not. The more abstract and ideological the realm, the more vehemently we can insist that moral choice in specific situations within narrow parameters proves a totality of freedom. But the closer the question moves to the core of our being, the more clearly and catastrophically the illusion crumbles — nowhere more helplessly than in the most intimate realm of experience: love. Try to will yourself into — or out of — loving someone, try to will someone into loving you, and you collide with the fundamental fact that we do not choose whom we love. We could not choose, because we do not choose who and what we are, and in any love that is truly love, we love with everything we are.

Baldwin

Nothing is more unbearable, once one has it, than freedom.

People can’t, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.

“When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.” ~ Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange