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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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What Do I Value?

Am I an ecologist with ecological values or am I a hedonist with consumerist values? I want to accept an ecological ethos to make myself a good and pious citizen of the world. I also want the dress in the window.

I remind myself that consumerist values are destructive to the planet, destructive to societies and destructive to my well-being. Environmental degradation, inequality and angst about not having or being enough are consequences that I see as I consume. So, I celebrate every time I decide not to get the dress in the window because, really, I don’t wear dresses and I don’t need another one to hang in my closet. I don’t make the best choice every day, but I am making better ones.

I am making better choices that don’t undermine the foundation on which my house rests because I want to enjoy the world, selfishly, as a beautiful sanctuary, and I hope that my children and grandchildren can do the same.

What are ecological values? How should be look at them? From our basic metaphor of the world as a sanctuary, immediately follows that the right and inevitable attitude towards the world is that of reverence. Thus reverence establishes itself as the chief ecological value…

A true exercise of reverence immediately implies responsibility…Responsibility is not “heavy”, a burden, but a concept that gives us wings and enables us to practice our reverence as a cosmic dance…

Frugality follows both responsibility and our sense of reverence…IN our interconnected world, and within its limited resources, if some consume too much, there is not enough for others…”What you have and don’t need is stolen from those who need it and don’t have it”…Frugality is born of our awareness that the orgy of consumption is obscene and immoral, of our awareness that in overconsuming we put enormous stress on Mother Earth and therefore on ourselves in the long run…

Diversity, at first sight, appears as an unlikely candidate for an important ecological value…We must maintain diversity to maintain vibrant life…Evolution means diversity. Human cultures mean diversity. Fulfilling human lives means diversity.

Justice has been enshrined in all significant value systems of humanity…Ecological justice signifies justice for all–not only within our own clan and within our own society; not only among nations of people, but also with respect to all living beings; and with regard to the Mother Earth herself…

Ecological values are offsprings of ecological consciousness.”1

Ecological values can seem like lofty ideals. Each, though, can be grounded in daily actions: admiring the sunrise while the gulls, and geese, and swans wake on the sand after picking up discarded masks and coffee cups, in last year’s winter coat.

What decision can I make today that helps me line up with ecological rather than consumerist values? Start there.

“You must take action. You must do the impossible. Because giving up is never an option.”
–Greta Thunberg

  1. Skolimowski, Henryk. A Sacred Place To Dwell. Great Britain. Element Books Limited. 1993. Page 34-37

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Quick Trip To Hell

In the book, Getting Grit, Caroline Adams Miller wrote the definition of hell:

“Someone once told me the definition of Hell: The last day you have on earth, the person you became will meet the person you could have become.”

Imagine what that would be like.

When I do that exercise, imagining, a few things come to mind. I have heard it said that a desire is not placed in a person without the seed that holds the ability to accomplish that desire. I also believe that we don’t always accomplish that desire in a way that we expect. A boy with a dream to win a World Series could become a championship-winning coach. Another belief I hold on to is that the universe, once stretched, can be stretched again more easily, like loosening up a balloon before you blow it up.

What do these beliefs have to do with my quick trip to hell and seeing myself as I could have been? Perhaps I am reminding myself that the achievement of what I desire is still possible.

Who do I see when I look at who I could have been? I see a radiant yogi, a wonder architect, and a compassionate human. Last year, I did a lot of work on my identity from James Clear’s Atomic Habits:

The more you repeat a behaviour, the more you reinforce the identity associated with that behaviour. In fact, the word identity was originally derived from the Latin word essentitas, which means being and identidem, which means repeatedly. Your identity is literally your “repeated beingness.”

After many trials, I settled on who I wanted to be: a radiant yogi, a wonder architect, and a compassionate human. And I am doing my best to live into those by repeating behaviours that exemplify those identities.

To be a radiant yogi, according to Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, is to live with virtue:

Fearlessness, purity of heart, perseverance in acquiring wisdom and in practicing yoga, charity, subjugation of the senses, performance of holy rites, study of the scriptures, self-discipline, straightforwardness, non-injury, truthfulness, freedom from wrath, renunciation, peacefulness, non-slanderousness, compassion for all creatures, absence of greed, gentleness, modesty, lack of restlessness, radiance of character, forgiveness, patience, cleanness, freedom from hate, absence of conceit–these qualities are the wealth of a divinely incline person.

With that comes the eight limbs of yoga: Yama (restraints), niyama (observances), asana (posture), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), Dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation), samadhi (pure contemplation).

To be a wonder architect embodies the principles from Christopher Alexander’s A Timeless Way of Building:

“To seek the timeless way we must first know the quality without a name:…3. The search which we make for this quality, in our own lives, is the central search of any person, and the crux of any individual person’s story. It is the search for those moments and situations when we are most alive.”

And Peter Block’s The Answer to How is Yes:

“An architect cares as much about the beauty of things as their more practical properties and how to make them work…architecture brings aesthetics and utility into harmony.”

As a compassionate human, my best self would be an exemplar of Kristin Neff’s definition of compassion (for self and others) in her book, Self-Compassion:

“Compassion involves the recognition and clear seeing of suffering. It also involves feelings of kindness for people who are suffering, so that the desire to help–to ameliorate suffering–emerges. Finally, compassion involves recognizing our shared human condition, flawed and fragile as it is.”

As I lie on my death bed, I hope that my best self, the self I was capable of being is that: a radiant yogi, a wonder architect, and a compassionate human. My best self looks down on my current self and gives her the gift of time. She is urging me with the fiercest intensity not to waste another moment because “it is never too late to be what you might have been.”

Going All to Hell, Roy Martell Mason
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But What Is The Question

I find myself asking a lot of How? question. Or I make how statements like I don’t know how to do something. So I pulled what I describe as one of my favorite books off the shelf. I think I call it my favorite because I love the title: The Answer To How Is Yes, by Peter Block. As I re-read it I realized why it stands out.

The introduction convicts me:

There is depth in the question “How do I do this?” that is worth exploring. The question is a defense against action. It is a leap past the question of purpose, past the queston of intentions, and past the drama of responsibility. The question “How?”–more than any other question–looks for the answer outside of us. It is an indirect expression of our doubts…

Pg, 1, The Answer to How is Yes, Peter Block

My notes on the book and long and deep. I say yes when I read how questions overvalue practical and doable skipping over purpose, and to truly act on our values we must accept that we are free to choose our own message regardless of what society says (Pg 41).

The most profound section of the book for me this time is one that I don’t remember reading last time, in spite of the yellow highlights I see. It asks us to be social architects. It explains that architects are concerned with beauty and practicality. And to be a social architect means that we are able to design social spaces where we thrive.

The social architect’s task is to create the space for people to act on what matters to them. It requires faith in common values and interest in the common good…What is required is simply the will to act as if we know enough right now to put the dream into action. And the belief that this is possible.

Pg 174, Peter Block

I want to live into this role and I will have to practice. I keep coming back to the question: How do I become a social architect? The answer is yes.

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