The Power of Choice

The last few days have gone in a tizzy and I have not had the chance to blog for quite sometime. Now that I am back to normalcy, thought would pick up the thread where I left...

Thinking of the many things that I can write on... the happenings of the last few days... the whirlpool of activities going around me for the last few weeks... etc etc... but I thought I will just give it a break and look ahead...Which in my opinion is the best thing to do.... coz looking back only takes you down the memory lane which are best forgotten.. So I decided that its time to look ahead with a fervor and zeal which may and should surpass the previous enthusiasm that I had as regards everything in life...

Of the many things that I have been thinking in the last few days, the one which I thought I will write on is the Power of Choice... the power which all of us have but very few of us realise and still a very few exercise in real life...

As Rousseau, the great Philosopher, exclaimed " man is born free but everywhere he is in chains"... is it really true or is it the figment of our imagination... True we are born in to a certain family, a certain culture and are part of a society which has its own inherent biases... but does that gives us the excuse to behave in a particular way or to function (or not to function) in a given way... As I said in one of my earlier blogs, that everyone has a right to happiness... similarly all of us have a right to and a power to choose the type of life that we have decided to live...

I always tend to look at life from the perspective of a journey and me being the traveller (people who know me closely would immediately recognise this bias coming from Paulo Coelho and his immensely inspirational books especially The Alchemist which has influenced me to a great extent)... In the journey of our life we are often confronted with bi, tri and multiple furcation and division in the road each inviting us to travel on it with promises of things which are blissful as well as fulfilling at the destination.... most traveler takes these roads in the hope that they will get at the end to what they have always cherished for... but has anybody ever thought of the journey on the way... is it going to be equally fulfilling, satiating or even pleasant to make the overall experience of the traveler worthwhile... All our life we struggle in our path and travel circuitous routes to arrive at the Utopia of our dream but alas.... at the end the thought always arises : "Is the chase worth the trophy?"... By the time we reach Utopia either we are too old or too sick to even appreciate the beauty of it.. come to think of it... the cherished destination for which we have been traveling our entire life coming to noughts...

Besides also if we look the Power of choice each of us have, it also gives us the power to be or not to be in a particular situation, condition or context... In this regard I vividly remember the last scene of movie Hellboy in its climax scene when the villain Rasputin captures Hellboy's lady love and telling Hellboy that she will only come back to life only if he complies to becoming evil (that he was originally destined to become from birth).... Hellboy, not wanting to lose his lady love awakens his true power as the devil, causing his devilish power to regrow. He nearly releases the devil, but the injured FBI agent working with him reminds him of who he is and that he has the right to choose his own path. Remembering his true self and what his father brought him up to be, he snaps back to reality and becomes the good self that he was previously and unleashes destruction for the evil forces...

There is 2 great lessons for us here: that is firstly about choosing between which path to undertake one's journey on and also that fact that a given situation,context, your background or the biases (that I was talking about earlier ) will not matter much if you have a strong resolve to exercise your Power of choice...

I always share this with people with whom I interact at a personal level:
"Listen closely to your heart and do its bidding... For when the heart calls its call has to be answered coz mind rationalises but the heart takes an informed decision based on its awareness of the type of person you are... "

So Go on... Exercise your Power of Choice...