Free Will?
Ever since I was a teenager, I have been actively seeking to, initially, escape the control of my parents and, more generally, become a more independent and self-sufficient person. For as long as I can remember, it has been a conscious part of the decisions that I’ve made and has been a major contributor in the specific choices I’ve made over the years. I always knew that this conscious effort was a byproduct of feeling far too sheltered and doing very few things independently as a child and this didn’t bother me at all.
That being said, I’ve recently come to the realization that all of my attempts to exercise free will and prove (to myself, I assume) that I was able to be independent and not simply succumb to the wills of others have had exactly the opposite effect. Looking back at many of the most important or life-altering decisions that I’ve made, they don’t seem to be those of one whose thoughts are his own. Instead, they seem to be a series of very simple reactions to major events or feelings immediately prior to the decision. I’ve just become reactionary, not adequately considering what I actually want in life and definitely not acting independently. As things in my life have gotten more and more chaotic over the past months, I have become more and more aware of this fact and started to dwell on it when in the type of mood that was conducive to this sort of thinking.
Tonight, I actually started to consider the magnitude of this reactionary behavior and think about the specific ways in which it has permeated my life over the past decade. Just some of the examples I have come up with follow:
It starts at a predictable point, with my graduation from high school and college search. The most direct reaction to the control that I was not afforded in my childhood manifested itself as a strong preference for schools that were decidedly far from the place where my family was living. This led me to decide that the University of Toronto was my top choice for colleges, which I was fortunate enough to get accepted to.
Next, while attending the University of Toronto, I reacted to my academics heavy and social life starved high school experience by actively choosing to prioritize social events over academics. As a result of this decision, I made a great deal of very good friends and had some of the most meaningful and irreplaceable moments of my life, with the unfortunate consequence of flailing in the academic realm.
After this, I started anew—with renewed vigor—at Massasoit Community College and decided that I wanted a more practical, less academics-heavy, and better paying career track. Since I had just experienced my first academic failure, I thought that a more “grounded” path with less chaos would be preferable. To that end, I enrolled in a Business program and intended to go into accounting, eventually leading to a successful (and safe) career as an accountant.
The exact reasons for the next several decisions that I made in my academic career aren’t exactly clear to me, but I have a feeling that they were also reactionary in nature. That being said, there are also numerous small-scale examples from my life that illustrate my reactionary behavior, as well. I’ve included one such example here:
When I was getting particularly stressed out by my failures in the academic realm, I reacted in a very predictable way (for me)—I decided to do something that would make me feel valuable and worthwhile in a different area of my life. Since the school-related issues weren’t immediately addressable, I decided to prove my worth in the romantic/sexual realm. After all, if I was able to attract a large number of partners and have sex with them, SURELY this would prove that I was not a complete failure—in fact, it would CLEARLY show that any confidence I showed would be justified. Well, that’s what was going on just below (and sometimes just above) my conscious awareness.
Now that I’ve reached another potential turning point in my life and the decision that I’m soon going to make will greatly affect the future trajectory of my life, I can’t help but wonder if I’m even ABLE to exhibit free will and make a truly independent choice. After all, isn’t the whole reason that I’m at this fork in the road PURELY a result of reactionary behavior and thoughts that were direct results of specific events that have taken place?
I guess I can’t help but worry that I will continue to make decisions without fully considering what is RIGHT for me, instead of both considering what others will think of me (the very thing I’ve been trying to escape from for all these years) and directly reacting to events that have taken place over the course of the past few weeks/months. What IS the “right” decision for me, anyway? I’m not even sure that I know how to go about answering this question and I’m terrified that I will never know how to do so!
I guess only time will tell…
