Choices. . . .(Answers to Random Deep Thoughts, Part 3.)

Hi all!! I have some fun stuff write about that I will post soon, but I wanted to get a couple of deep posts out of the way. I wanted to finish off Random Deep Thought questions. Today's post will be my answer to questions 5 & 6, which read:

5. Is joy really a choice? As in: "Pain is inevitable. Misery an option. Joy/Happiness a choice.

"6. Isn't everything else good in life, then, also a choice? Examples: real love, forgiveness, peace, health, harmony, etc.


Well, my short answer is. . . .YES!!! Ok, that's it. End of post. Just kidding. There are a couple of comments and quotes I want to touch on.

Why do I say yes to these questions? Simple, because "what we focus on determines our perception of reality at any given moment." (Anthony Robbins) What meaning we give a given situation determines our emotions about it. Here's an example.

I have a good friend who is a big hunk of a man. There isn't much that scares him. Hell, he's a NYC cop and carries a gun. But get him on a roller coaster (if you can) and he becomes the biggest pussy in the world!!! I once offered him $500 to go the roller coaster Nitro (perhaps one of the most awesome roller coaster I have ever been on) at Six Flags Great Adventure with me. Nope, he wouldn't do it. His perception of roller coasters are they are scary. Me? I love them. Let's go adrenaline!!

Let's take this now to some deeper emotions, feelings such as joy, love, happiness, forgiveness, peace, etc. To feel these, is it not also a choice? The answer is yes. My sister disagreed and said no. She wrote me, How can you choose to feel the emotion joy? Can you wake up in the morning and say to yourself I'm going to feel joy/happy today!

Actually, you can. It may be tough at first, but if you are practicing your fundamentals, then it becomes second nature to wake up feeling good, or to experience peace as the world collapses around you. Controlling your focus is what Viktor Frankl writes about in Man's Search for Meaning. Frankl survived the Holocaust by using the power of his mind to focus on ways to survive, to find a positive meaning to the hell he lived through. Few of us are living through a Holocaust right now, (though Kelly, I know the bombs are exploding around you), so shouldn't it be easier for us to control the focus of our minds. Here is a quote from one of the reviewers on Amazon.com:

"Frankl's thesis is that the ultimate freedom we have is to choose our response to whatever befalls us and that it remains for us to find the meaning of it -- as evidenced in our response. This would sound like so much emotional candy for people without significant problems except that he has a strong moral position to say this: 5 years in Nazi concentration camps. As he speaks of prisoners finding dignity in simple acts like giving away their ration of food or facing their death bullet with poise, I see how instead of crumpling from the weight of my misfortunes, I can use them to become stronger and reach past myself to help others."


My sister further wrote, in answer to question 6, "Jim can you choose not to love me? Granted I'm your sister, but I have done a lot of things during the course of our lives and did you choose to forgive me or did it just eventually come automatically, or for that matter Daddy? When it comes to real love that is something you're born with when it comes to certain people in your life and you have no choice in that. With time everything gets forgiven."

And this is where I complete disagree with my sister. (Just a little family background first. My family was extremely dysfunctional. I'm amazed that Kelly and I even talk to each other let alone love each other after all the shit we put each other through. It has been a long road to healing and the good.) Kelly, yes it is a choice that I forgave you and choose to love you instead of toss you out of my life. I have a friend whose older half-brother and half-sister put him in the oven when his was a kid and they were drug-addicted teenagers. He has never forgiven them, won't even visit him mom if they are over, even after the sister has been clean and sober for years and has asked forgiveness numerous times.

And the same goes with my feelings towards my Dad. I choose to call him at Christmas. I choose to stop keeping him out of my life. (Don't know if that was grammatically correct.)

You do have a choice with regards to who you love in this life. Even when you "fall in love." It's just unconsciousous then. And you still have to make the conscious choice to love the person after the "in love" period wears off. You have a script written in your brain as to what characteristics you are attracted to in another, and then your brain finds that person. That is why so many women fall for men who are assholes and so many men fall for women who are psycho, even if they say they don't want to do so. They haven't consciously changed the unconsciousous scripts in their head. (More on this in the upcoming post that deals with "settling down.") Here are two examples.

I have a friend who has repeatedly played the role of "rebound girl" in her relationships. She'll get with a guy after he breaks up with a girlfriend, help him back on his feet and then he leaves her. This has happens so many times. I don't know if this has changed for her by now. But I do know that it won't until she makes a conscious choice to change the script being played in her brain. How do I know that? Well, I had to consciously change the script in my head that caused me to be attracted to girls who need "saving." What is funny is that a friend identified to me way back in my senior year of high school (1993)! But still I ran the script of being attracted to, and attracting into my life, women who were emotionally unable to give and receive love in a healthy fashion. And it wasn't only until this year that I finally, and permanently, rewrote that script in my brain. "No more bad love!" to quote a song by Eric Clapton.

To sum it up, every action we take is based on an unconscious or conscious choice that we make. And "every action is a cause set in motion," as Anthony Robbins would say. There is a song we'd sing in my Unitarian-Universalist church back in Greensboro that I feel sums up the whole consciously make choices and saying "yes" to the good in life (love, peace, forgiveness, hope, health, etc). It's called Just As Long As I Have Breath, and I will close with it.

Just as long as I have breath,
I must answer, Yes, to life;
Though with pain I made my way,
Still with hope I meet each day.
If they ask what I did well,
Tell them I said, Yes, to life.

Just as long as vision lasts,
I must answer, Yes, to truth;
In my dream and in my dark,
Always that elusive spark.
If they ask what I did well,
Tell them I said, Yes to truth.

Just as long as my heart beats,
I must answer, Yes, to love,
Disappointment pierced me through,
Still I kept on loving you.
If they ask what I did best,
Tell them I said, Yes, to love."

(P.S. Here is a great sermon based on that hymn.)