Zen-ish Thoughts About Not Having A Choice

Sometimes we don't have a choice. When your employer fires you, or your partner exist the relationship, or you get a cold, or … many other things, you truly don't have a choice, just a choice about how you respond.

Most of the time when we say we didn't have a choice we are really expressing discomfort about a choice we did have but didn't like. Here is an example. "I really wanted to go on that long-awaited mini-vacation, but had no choice when my child got sick." No, you did have a choice, and based on your values hierarchy (in the best case) or fear of other people judging you (in the worst case), you chose to take care of your child.

A Zen-ish approach always begins with what is so. It's not a high quality choice when one option is completely unacceptable, so some other option is chosen even if it is only slightly less objectionable, but is is a choice. This is important because "I had no choice" is not only unfactual, not what is so, it misses the opportunity to acknowledge to yourself that you had the courage to make an unpleasant choice in order to be true to your values (in the best and presumably most usual case). "I had no choice" makes you a hapless victim when in fact your were a moral hero. That is known as clutching defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Here is another, more problematic example. "I had no choice but to placate my abusive spouse yet again, for fear they would otherwise beat me yet again." The clearly coerced, forced choice to protect yourself in the short term is a choice, and a good one. Sticking around as this situation repeatedly arises is also a choice, and a bad one. This is not a no-choice scenario.

Let's make it even more problematic. "I could not get divorced. I had no choice. I had to stay for the sake of the kids, and I had to stay because I couldn't support myself and my kids." Terrible circumstances, but not choiceless. In fact, in this example a choice is being made to stay. Other options are available, even if we assume that counseling has either been rejected, or undertaken without positive results.

To think that children raised in terrible marriages are not damaged for life by by its continuance is a common mistake. Thinking that modeling self-respect, personal agency, and courage (by leaving a hopeless situation, taking new risks, and eventually having a fuller, richer, happier life) is worse for the children than modeling victimhood and suffering is a common mistake. To imagine that one has no financial future after divorce rather than noting it will be challenging but can and often does end well is a mistake. Although it doesn't feel like it, there is a lot of powerful, consequential choice in this situation, and one is actively making a choice every day they stay, or work on an exit.

"Shall I take this stray dog to the pound, knowing that at his age he is unlikely to be adopted and likely to be euthanized, or keep this dog as my own pet when I really do not want a pet at this time?" There are a million reason not to take on a pet just because you happened to come upon a stray. It's perfectly reasonable to take the dog to the pound and hate the likely outcome. It's perfectly reasonable to try to get the dog into foster care instead, where he will have a better quality of life, a longer period in which to be adopted, and perhaps even a guarantee not to be euthanized. It's perfectly reasonable to adopt the dog yourself, against you own reservations. The only unreasonable thing to do here is to pretend you don't have a choice.

If you "don't have a choice" so must take him to the pound, you miss the more hopeful option of dog foster care. If you "don't have a choice" so adopt the dog as your own and then resent the dog, you become the source of greatest harm. If you make a choice and then feel and act like a victim who "didn't have a choice", you and the dog both suffer more than is necessary because you have embraced something that is not true. There are so many true things that give rise to suffering. That is more than enough. We should not add more suffering due to things that aren't even true.

Lots of things come to us without our choosing, some of it bad and some of it good. But almost every time we say that we didn't have a choice, it masks that we did, but did not step up to the responsibility or the opportunity that choice provided.

Zen-ish approaches alway begin with noting what is actually so, piercing the illusions that obscure what is actually so. Zen-ish cosmology encourages us to see our own agency, responsibility, and response-ability. Every time you feel that you have no choice, seek a clearer understanding of what is so.