You are radically and fundamentally free, to do whatever you want to do, to be whoever you want to be. Now that we’ve got the daily affirmations out of the way, let us proceed with the rest of it. It doesn’t take much to get to the crux of this issue: We are the chief architects of our outlook, and the masons of our lives. Just as we are radically free, so are we radically responsible for our choices and actions.
I
Herein lies the cause of the anxiety.
Each decision we make eliminates the possibility of other options; for each ‘yes’ given, there is a possible ‘no’ that could have been given instead. Each choice holds the possibility of being the resounding ‘right’ choice, or the cataclysmically ‘wrong’ one. The knowledge that we are incapable of delegating or abdicating these choices, nor capable of blaming someone else for the outcomes of our choices, is what sparks this anguish.
It’s much easier to tell yourself — lie to yourself — and say you don’t have radical and fundamental freedom. That you have to do X, or that you need to do Y, for it is easier than saying I have an infinite choice of things do to, and then to pick one.
It is due to this that people implement this self-deception — this Bad Faith — in order to relinquish themselves from this responsibility of their freedom.
We deceive ourselves into believing we don’t have the freedom to make these choices, as we fear the potential consequences. We regress into a state in which we wilfully fail to recognise the numerous choices available to us, and find ourselves — akin to how the waves of the sea are blown and tossed the wind — ‘powerless’ and at the mercy of the circumstance. In this state of self-deception, we become more like an object on which the world exerts its influence, as opposed to conscious being who pursues their own ends. Instead, we settle for more pragmatic and banal concerns, and embrace morals, values, social roles and even aspirations that are foreign to our nature.
Hypothesise that I have a lifelong dream of packing all my stuff into a leather duffel, and spiriting myself away to become a goat herder in Guatemala. Now, I am completely free and within my power to do this, and — in a vacuum — it feels reasonable to say there’s nothing stopping me from doing this. But, further hypothesise me as a single father of two pre-teens. With this addition, it now seems there is a responsibility for me to use my radical freedom in order to benefit and provide for my children. This conflicts with my desire to use my freedom to catch a flight to The Americas. Even further hypothesise that the job I presently have doesn’t provide me with anything other than capital. It’s unfulfilling, unrewarding, and hampers my ability to spend quality time with my family.
Now, I’m still fully capable of becoming a goatherd, but the weight of the consequences for this choice are so great, that there is a paralysing anxiety about making that kind of radical change. In pursuing my dream, I fulfil myself, and perhaps also find myself able to reclaim more time to spending with my children. On the contrary, being a goatherd would require me to uproot the lives of my children. Not being a lucrative industry, it may also hinder my ability to fiscally care for my family, or provide them with the opportunities that my present job allows.
It is in this that the self-deception takes place. It would be easier in this situation to tell myself that I have to stay in this job, because I have to be a father. In my present career, there is a regularity and near-calculable reliability. Food will always be on the table, a roof forever over our heads. The alternative — although my heart yearns for it — is an unknown. Either choice, in varying respects, has the ability to make us or ruin us.
If we relinquish control, if we render ourselves mere objects on which external forces are imposed, then we relinquish the ability to be the grand architects of our lives and happiness. We render ourselves incapable to think of ways to craft the lives we want to live. We let go of the steering wheel, we lower the sails on the masts.
II
This Bad Faith exists in all facets of life
The message we receive from Western Society is of individuality and self-actualising, yet the encouragement is contrary. We are implicitly compelled to abide by the established status quo and cultural norms: beauty standards, value norms, wealth, lifestyle, job description, being materialistic accumulators. The measure of ourselves is not in relation to the self, but to everybody else. This is the complete converse to the message we’re told.
Many often forego true auditing of their beliefs and personal truths for the simpler ideological/intellectual/political affiliation. We are Christian, or we are Hindu. We’re Conservative, or we’re Liberal. We find ourselves identifying with the rhetoric of a larger whole, with solid black lines and no space for elaboration or personal insight, simply because it’s easier than being self-critical.
III
So how do we cessate from this world of objecthood, and return ourselves to free beings?
Make peace with the responsibility you have over your choices
Now this one can come across as leading to a vicious cycle: we render ourselves objects because we fear the choices of our radical freedom, but we embrace our radical freedom as a means to end our state of objecthood, which in turn leads us to fear our radical freedom…
The crux of this step is not solely the embracing of our nature as free beings, but the acceptance of the possibilities it entails. The sooner we can accept that we may sometimes make poor choices, or opt for things which lead to our detriment, is strangely the sooner we end up in the states of affairs we actually want.
If we refuse to make movements out of fear of outcome, we get neither closer nor farther away from what we want. Forever lukewarm, forever uninspired. When we allow ourselves to take leaps of faith — either polarised outcome can be considered a good outcome, for it either rewards us or educates us via negativa.
Own your choices
If you feel trapped in a job, relationship, country, realise that you COULD just up and leave. You aren’t being universally compelled to stay, but you are electing to stay.
In the specific case of work: it’s evident that there is a societal necessity for money, and a job is instrumental in that. If it’s not something you want to do or enjoy, then it may fare useful to keep at the forefront of your mind the idea that you have capability of leaving to find something better suited to yourself.
We don’t always have to make our favoured choice. Often, we make compromising and sacrificial choices in order to protect some other goods in our life. But it is the simple notion of having an option — not being compelled to do this, or do that — which allows for those difficult, practical choices we make against our true desires to be a little bit more potable.
Consider the minor steps you can take towards major change.
Many write off what they want as ‘unrealistic’ or ‘pipe dreams’; that only the greatly lucky get to live the life they want. Most people, however, never actually truly try to inch themselves closer to what they want.
We see our present life, and the life we want, and focus only on the chasm in between. But not all radical change need be a grand saltation.
A phrase I often find myself recanting is “we overestimate what we can do in a day, but underestimate what we can do in a year”. We put so much weight on the idea of changing today, achieving our desires in as short a term as possible. But bridges spanning wide gaps are built over time — plank by plank.
So spend some time researching, making actionable choices, calculating required finances, implementing small elements of the life you wish for into your current everyday life. As you break it all down, you may come to realise it’s a lot more attainable than first considered.
Spend some time thinking about how it may go awry
I’ve covered this practice in an earlier blog post — Why We Fail To Start — this is the time-honoured Stoic practice of Premeditatio Malorum. To reiterate, this practice simply gets us to consider the ways our choices may negatively impact us or go against our expectations. In thinking about how things may go wrong, we are gifting ourselves the opportunity to plan ways of handling the fallout, and turning the situation back around in our favour.
