A question of will

A question that has fascinated me for a long time is the question of whether or not people actually possess the power of free will. If you really look deeply into this area it has the ability to blow the lid off of society in general.

Our whole society is based on the idea that we actually can choose right from wrong and choose what direction that we will take our lives. Let's take a murderer for example or even a child molester. Is it just luck that I am not one?

A sobering and humbling thought to me was how could I ever know that I wouldn't have ended up committing horrible acts like many people have. If I was born at a particular time, in a particular environment, to a particular family, with a specific make up of brain matter, and specific exposure to specific experiences, who is to say that I wouldn't have grown up to do some really awful things? Or some really great things for that matter?

In the book, "Outliers," Malcolm Gladwell makes a strong case for the fact that people like Bill Gates and Mozart where lucky enough to be born in a situation that gave them all sorts of favorable conditions. His concepts challenged the idea of the self-made man for an alternative convincing idea about how highly successful people are actually products of extraordinary environments that give them a huge advantage.

We can take this matter conversely to the typical person spending their life in jail. Look back at their life and see what sort of situation they were subjected to. I would guarantee that you would notice a very particular trend. Awful childhood, perhaps addiction and/or mental illness, and the list goes on...

I have posed this concept to many people over the years and I am struck with a similar response. People usually give examples of those who have beat the odds and come out successfully despite forces against them.

Sometimes it was a very strong response as if people don't like to consider the fact that the reason that they are in the position they are in could be very little to do with their own efforts. And the urge to blame is so strong in us. We are so quick to judge people and have no doubt that we would make all of the right choices no matter what the conditions were.
But ask yourself, is this REALLY true? How in the world could you know?

Unless you experience the exact same conditions looking through the exact same pair of eyes, using the exact same brain chemistry, you could NEVER know.

So what is my point to this diatribe? My position is that we are just lumps of clay that the universe shapes and twists and bends into whatever forms our lives presently take. This may sound like a cynical approach, but whatever control we may be able to exert in our own lives comes from waking up out of the dream of fear that most of us are snoring our way through. If you are reading this, could it be that somehow you are being asked to look more deeply at your life? What is the purpose of your life? To be born, grow up, get a job, raise a family, die…and to have the whole cycle endlessly repeated? If that is a satisfying scenario for you, then far be it from me to suggest an alternative view. If you are living a satisfying life, then keep living it for God's sake.

But if there is a gnawing inside you, like there was inside me for something different, something more fulfilling than the monotony of regular life, start by looking close. Refuse the temptation to blame others and look at the pattern of your life. Where is fear blocking you? Keep looking in that direction and you may discover how you have been sleeping through an endless pattern of the same things over and over. How you are repeating the environment that was created for you as a child? All it takes is that you look closely. Writing about it is the best way. Once you see it you can then start to dream up something new for yourself.