CHOICES
I intend to write about the gift of making a choice. Indeed, it takes some time and often a lot of courage, and wisdom and freedom - to come to know what one really wants. The choice is made difficult not by the fact that one of the options is an evil or less in perfection but by the beauty and perfection of both. In other words, choice is an art.
Among the many things which tend to make choosing burdensome is fear to commit one self. why? Because by making a choice I commit myself, take on myself the direct responsibility and the radical burden of each of the consequences of my acts. This is sometimes dreadful!
Indeed, some choices are disjunctional i.e. "either... or..." choosing one thing implies letting go of another. In very simple terms, "to choose is to reject." This too is sometimes dreadful!
C.G Valles in the famous book " The Art of Choosing " tells a beautiful story...
"I watched a small girl go through the painful act of choosing between two dolls in a shop full of toys. Her mother had told her plainly ; "one or the other; you choose." After a long struggle to get both dolls, her mother resolutely stopped her.
She finally understood and picked one out of the two. the doll was packed and paid for. However, she looked once more to the doll that was left behind, and I fancied I saw guilt in the little child for abandoning the other doll.
She did something unexpected and beautiful! she broke loose, rushed back , went to the place where the rejected doll had been left , gave it a kiss and ran back to her mother. In that kiss was all the agony, the pain and the regret and the helplessness of the choice that could not be."
Philosophers call this phenomena 'existential guilt.'
'Existential Guilt.'
“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”
― Voltaire
Martin Heidegger has opined that human existence is encumbered by guilt due to the existential realization that only a finite number of possibilities could be actualized. That once a particular choice is taken, the other options are negated and thus left unactualised.
Paul Ricœur on the other hand has observed that human existence is encumbered by existential unhappiness. Both thinkers grasp the fact that no matter how man(sic) might endeavour to perfect his nature by actualising his potential, satisfaction is never guaranteed.
It is important to note that most existential philosophers assume that human living will inevitably expose us to falling short and therefore to feeling existential guilt. We are always indebted to life. We are always capable of being more alive, more open, more true to the potential of human consciousness than we actually are.
“Maybe there's more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.”
― Veronica Roth, Divergent
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