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Chance and Choice

I finished reading a lovely novel, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig, and this week several similar thematic writings have come across my desk.

The GoodReads synopsis tells us what happens in the Midnight Library:

Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?”…

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?1

And this comes into view from one of my favorite newsletters, BrainPickings:

To be alive is to marvel — at least occasionally, at least with glimmers of some deep intuitive wonderment — at the Rube Goldberg machine of chance and choice that makes us who we are as we half-stride, half-stumble down the improbable paths that lead us back to ourselves. My own life was shaped by one largely impulsive choice at age thirteen, and most of us can identify points at which we could’ve pivoted into a wholly different direction — to move across the continent or build a home here, to leave the tempestuous lover or to stay, to wait for another promotion or quit the corporate day job and make art. Even the seemingly trivial choices can butterfly enormous ripples of which we may remain wholly unwitting — we’ll never know the exact misfortunes we’ve avoided by going down this street and not that, nor the exact magnitude of our unbidden graces.

Perhaps our most acute awareness of the lacuna between the one life we do have and all the lives we could have had comes in the grips of our fear of missing out — those sudden and disorienting illuminations in which we recognize that parallel possibilities exists alongside our present choices. “Our lived lives might become a protracted mourning for, or an endless tantrum about, the lives we were unable to live,” wrote the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips in his elegant case for the value of our unlived lives. “But the exemptions we suffer, whether forced or chosen, make us who we are.”2

What do we do at crossroads? Do we leave it to chance or make a choice? Either way, we are leaving one path for another.

The place I am at now tells me that my choices need to be made looking out and not down. I think I would like to be a good ancestor:

  1. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52578297-the-midnight-library
  2. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/01/06/simone-de-beauvoir-all-said-and-done-chance-choice/
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Avert Climate Disaster?

I recently finished Bill Gates new book, How To Avoid A Climate Disaster. It was full of thoughtful insights with up-to-date numbers and charts. Bill Gates filled his time in 2020 researching and writing this book. It is a treatise designed to get us into action. He wants to compel us to do something, not waiting for the other guy to get things going. Be an early adopter.

I agree with it all: we need to choose zero carbon alternatives; we need to be aware of corporate practices and let them know with your wallets what we will and won’t accept.

The book, though, seems to be written for Americans when Americans are making bad climate action decisions: leaving the Paris Agreement, gutting the Environment Protection Agency. Gates makes his strongest case for taking action politically with votes and advocacy. It all makes good sense, even if you are not American. We are not moving the needle fast enough. We need policies to force change. Yes, governments can help us decide which lane we are driving in. I think, though, in addition to a top-down approach–laws, regulations, and a push for more innovative research and development, we need grassroots actions. It is not a footnote to decide to energy conservation in your home or walk to the store instead of driving. We need to ensure that ecologically sustainable options are at the forefront of our decisions. Each step is one step closer and each conversation helps keep this crisis on the front page.

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Culturally Appropriate

I have been asking myself a question that I can’t find an answer to. Where does cultural appropriation stop?

I have been practicing yoga for a while. The instructor–a Western millenial–uses Sanskrit words to describe postures and bbereathing, and ends every session with “Namaste.” I have been listening to elders speak about indigenous practices like smudging and drumming to connect with the energy of the collective. If I now adopt those practices as my own–yoga, meditation, earth medicine–have I appropriated them?

I am a colonized Westerner. I am not sure how to honour the heritage of the practices within the culture without feeling like a Westerner who takes everything for their own and it becomes a pale reflection of the original–think power yoga and the dangerous sweat lodge practices of years ago.

One elder offered help:

because these people [Westerners] were not created here. By proxy we are the ones with our fires and they need to come to us with that honour and respect and humility to be able to heal and to connect to their ancestors. And they always need to be told that you come from a place that is your homeland. To tell them consistently, the white people that come to our ceremonies, we are happy to share our sacred fire with you because at this fire is the essence of life, of who the Creator is. If you make your offerings, you make your prayers, have your fast, your vision quest, or whatever, we’ll help you with that, but you’ve gotta do your work to find out who is the Creator and what does the Creator want you to do in your life. We’ll help you with it but in that journey of your healing, you need to go back to your homelands, walk in the place of your ancestors, and that will change you forever. Because that is where you belong and we are sharing this land with you, and we also have a duty to share with you how to respect and honour these homelands, and you need to live with those natural laws and those spiritual laws that govern Turtle Island [North America]. You come here and we’re not interested in your passport, we’re interested in if you will adhere to these natural laws and spiritual laws.1

It seems that we can come together and learn from each other; and we need to respect where each has come from. In my heart, I hope that I am respecting the essence of the practice will making it part of my heritage that my grandchildren will honour.

  1. https://jabsc.org/index.php/jabsc/article/view/577
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Quietly Bold

As I retold an embarrassing moment from my childhood–doing something that made me foolishly stand out, that still brings a head-shaking colour to my cheeks, a colleague suggested that maybe I am meant to be bold and stand out, and this moment squashed my spirit. I told her that I would only do it if I could stand out quietly.

That reflection led to a Google rabbit trail about what it means to be quietly bold (boldly quiet led to websites about introverts). The first number of entries related to Quietly Bold Films who boldly tell stories through the female lens. There is also quite a discussion on how to translate quietly bold well into French, with a distinction between bold and loud. I can get a t-shirt with quietly bold written under a symbol which might something to someone. And there is a horse named Quietly Bold. Three pages in I could only find one reference that might help me understand what it means to be quietly bold.

Boldness doesn’t mean rude, obnoxious, loud, or disrespectful. Being bold is being firm, sure, confident, fearless, daring, strong, resilient, and not easily intimidated. It means you’re willing to go where you’ve never been, willing to try what you’ve never tried, and willing to trust what you’ve never trusted. Boldness is quiet, not noisy.1

It seems that Bold does not need a descriptor. It needs courage. That might be a rabbit trail for another day.

  1. https://dustyholcomb.com/2019/09/10/quietly-bold/