Monosophia ~ Chapter 1: The Ultimate Freedom Of Choice

Have you ever wondered what makes us behave the way we do? I am sure most of us have. Very early in my life, I have realized that I not only have the power to make my own decisions, but also the responsibility to do so. This makes me wonder if other people view the world in the same way, and suspect that perhaps they don't.

One of my first realizations about the nature of decisions came when I was perhaps ten years old. My parents told me to clean up my room, or something of the like. I hated cleaning up, obviously, and I kept wondering, why do I have to do it. And I gave myself the most sensible response: I have the choice of not doing it, but then I have to also bear the consequences of disobeying my parents, who shelter me and feed me. That is why I should choose to just clean up as the best option available.

Thinking about this reminded me of much earlier event. When I was in kindergarten, I did not want to eat my lunch. I don't remember the exact reason. Perhaps I just considered the food disgusting due to my overly sensitive taste buds. The teachers noticed I am not finishing my food, so one of them came to me and said: "If you don't eat your lunch, you can't go playing with the other children!"

I am sure that was supposed to sound so threatening that I would realize my foolishness and just eat it. This teacher, however, made a miscalculation in considering my priorities. At the age of four, I was already able to consider the cost of forcing myself to do something I disliked and not playing with other children was a very small price to pay. I decided to just sit in front of my plate until my parents picked me up. That is not what a typical child would do. Incidents like these make me wonder why are the choices I make in my life so different from what other people would choose to do.

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Vancouver Art Gallery - photo by me

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I know what drives my conscious decisions. I am always trying to choose the best option available to me at the moment. Naturally, not all decisions can be conscious and easily analyzed. The unconscious decisions range from yawning to liking or disliking certain people.

I believe we are too quick to categorize decisions made on unconscious level as our nature. Unconscious decisions are not irrational or pathological. They are what our unconsciousness considers to be best for us. The reasons for that are sometimes just too complicated to understand. Let me suggest an explanation:

To save energy and brain processing capacity, our body will remember our priorities while making choices and it will store that information for later use in compressed form. When a new problem arises, our body is figuring out the best solution in the background of our thinking process. Because there are many factors involved, the information would be difficult to process on conscious level. Therefore the body signals it to us through feelings and emotions.

Although difficult, it is possible to backtrack seemingly irrationally appearing emotions all the way to their original cause. It is up to our consideration whether it's worth it or whether we should just accept our body's emotional advice and choose the path of least emotional resistence. Our body actually knows us better than we can ever comprehend on conscious level. We should bear in mind that we are always responsible for our decisions and using emotions to justify our choices does not make us any less responsible for them.

I hope this post has inspired you to ask yourself some new questions. I will be grateful if you decide to share your thoughts with me. Let me know what are you missing in the article, what I overlooked and where your experience might be different from mine.