“Every moment of one’s existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit.” Norman Mailer
The most encouraging part of this opening quote is that we get to choose our direction. We can advance or retreat, live a little more or die a bit today, expand our life, or shrink back in fear. It is our choice, and we alone get to make it.
I heard it said that history does not repeat itself, but that human nature does.
If this is true, and I believe it is, then we will always have the rise and fall of evil nations, corrupt politicians, and murderous individuals. But why is this?
Fundamentally, it’s because we are given free will. We are given the ability to choose, and this is one of the most significant truths in life.
Humans, throughout history, have decided, through their own justification, that genocide is acceptable, and that spending their life on a peace project is a worthy venture, or that a life of solitude as a monk is acceptable. The only common denominator is free will.
“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” Anais Nin
Each of us gets to wake up daily and decide what to pursue. Will we choose to build or destroy? Will we create art or war?
Or will we entirely choose a different path, one that says, I’m a product of the world around me, the culture I’ve grown up in, and my influences have shaped me?
This is the position of the victim; life happens to them, not because of them or by them. When someone says, ‘I can’t help it. It’s just the way I was raised’ or any other form of victimhood, they’ve decided to lay down their free will, and this is a grave mistake, and what these people do not realize is that even this is a choice one makes.
At the most fundamental level, we are bound or set free by our choices.
The titan and the peasant, the victor and the victim, the hero and the villain—each is separated from the other not by fate but by their beliefs and actions. The decision is yours. Choose wisely.
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