"This is not my beautiful blog..."

I have been finding myself thinking a lot about Choice lately. I am over a half-century old, and I still don’t know how to make good ones.

Aside from the obvious everyday events such as “whether to have the tall or the grande mocha,” we usually think of “choice” as something momentous and life changing: Choice with a capital “C.” But most seemingly momentous choices come about because of the result of a whole chain of smaller choices. In fact, the most insidious thing about the whole concept of choice is that most of us, I think, float along through life not even realizing that every day of our lives, practically everything we do or say is part of a long string of small choices.

For one thing, you got out of bed. “Oh, I have to; I have to go to work.” Well, yes, but you’re still deciding, aren’t you? You have decided to get up and go to work/school/ whatever. You could have decided not to. “No, I couldn’t; I’d lose my job.” Well, of course. That means you would have decided to risk losing your job. It’s still a choice.

Remember the Talking Heads song, “Once in a Lifetime?”

You may ask yourself, how did I get here?

What are you doing with your life? You’ve chosen it, probably one step at a time, but there it is. Been married more than 10 seconds? Choice. Finished a degree? Choice. Didn’t finish a degree? Choice. Behind in your work? Choice. Put up with a bunch of crap that drives you crazy? Choice. Sorry.

Are we consciously aware of making all these choices every day? Not really. I don’t think “I’m choosing to brush my teeth right now,” although I am. I could skip it if I wanted to. I find teaching large classes almost intolerably stressful, but I have taught at least one class of anywhere from 95 to 460 students almost every semester that I have been a full-time professor. Why? Because I love the students, I think it’s a shame that they have to be herded into these huge anonymizing classes, I want to keep my job, and this job requires me to teach huge classes so that a bunch of bureaucrats can gas off about “student contact hours” in the legislature. Choice. The Chronicle of Higher Ed is just a click away; I could look at the job listings if I wanted to. There are schools whose entire student body is smaller than the History of Rock and Roll class that I taught for a number of semesters and still oversee. Choice. I could get a different teaching job. “But I wouldn’t get anywhere, because I’m still finishing my doctorate.” Choice. “But I didn’t choose to finish it, they made me finish it or else I wouldn’t get tenure.” Bullcrap, it’s my choice. I could have told them to shove it and looked for a different job; I did not.

You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful house
You may tell yourself, this is not my beautiful wife . .

Choice, choice, choice. I’ll have coffee instead of tea. I’ll have the scone instead of the apple. I’ll sleep another half hour instead of going for a walk. I’ll grade these papers tomorrow instead of today because I’m so stressed out…right…from the consequences of the other thirty-two stupid choices that I made in the last week.

Sometimes I feel as though there is a gremlin in my brain who is making these choices. Why am I not a full-time performer of medieval music who lives somewhere in New England so that it’s easier to fly to Europe where most of the gigs are? There’s a string of choices there long enough to make a prayer-mala (and not all of them bad). Why do I still only know 2 tunes on the button accordion I bought last summer? Why are there still things about my life, my relationships, my job, my creative life about which I feel unhappy, and why have those things been the same for decades, despite years of therapy?

You may ask yourself, am I right, am I wrong?
You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done?

The problem is that one bad choice leads to another. Here’s a mundane, everyday example: I seem to gain weight in proportion to how unhappy I am (unless it gets to the psychic or emotional emergency point, in which case I start losing again, but that’s fortunately not the norm.) As you can imagine, that starts a pretty diabolical spiral, because when it comes to assuaging the unhappiness and futility of trying to jam the Pillsbury Doughboy into size 10 jeans, nothing beats chocolate. A hundred previous rotten choices have led to another one.

What would happen if we actually became aware of every single choice we made – and by aware, I mean aware that it is a choice? What if, when the alarm goes off at some horrid hour, we consciously thought “I am choosing to hit the snooze button and remain the shape of a couch-potato,” or conversely, “I am choosing to get up and go for a walk even though I feel like warmed-over crap because I chose to go to sleep very late last night.” I suspect that if we were aware of everything we were choosing, some of our choices would suddenly appear absurd at best and intensely self-destructive at worst. And yet, I’m not sure that would solve the problem, and here’s why: because I truly believe that there is a small part of all of us, or at least those of us who experience this syndrome, that doesn’t really believe in consequence. This is a horrific problem for many of the students I deal with: “I forgot to take the midterm, I can’t help it, I spaced it, isn’t there some extra credit thing that I can do to make up for it?” I get pissed off at them, but what am I doing differently? I blew off working on my doctorate for the last month because I felt overwhelmed by my teaching duties; can I do something for extra credit so you’ll give me tenure anyhow?

I can’t help but suspect that the same brain-gremlin who at some level doesn’t really, truly believe that practicing will make her play better is, in fact, the same brain-gremlin who doesn’t believe that eating differently and exercising more would bring that LDL down. It’s as though some part of my brain has rejected the entire concept of cause and effect, while giving lots of lip-service to believing in “karma” and castigating students for being ignorant of the consequences of their ill-informed actions.

Perhaps this is the root of the difference between “disciplined” and “undisciplined” individuals. My partner is one of the most disciplined individuals I have ever met. He also seems to not only understand concept of consequences but to accept it without any fuss or resistance. Anger, maybe, if someone else’s stupidity has caused bad consequences, but he’s pretty clear on the cause and effect part of the equation. (And OK, he’s a Capricorn, but you can’t attribute all of it to astrology!) Does is come from our very different ways of being raised: the “everything is somebody else’s goddamned fault” of my family vs the “everything is your own goddamned fault” of his, neither extreme being particularly helpful or healthy? What makes one person have faith in cause and effect and another person seem to operate as though there is no such thing?

Those of you who read this blog know that one of my favorite topics is that whole zen concept of “no results.” We are terribly attached to results; the idea is to make choices and engage in action out of the conviction that it is right action and right choice, and not in order to get the “cookies” you receive from getting the results you want/expect. This is going to sound contradictory, but I think it’s possible that those of us who can’t seem to “connect” with cause and effect and the consequences of our choices are actually more attached to results than those who are more like my aforementioned partner. Is our persistent refusal to make logical or healthy choices some kind of convoluted way to avoid disappointment, or the frustration of not getting results as quickly as you want, or not getting the desired results at all? After all, at some level, if you make a lousy choice, you know damned well what the lousy result will be, and at least that’s reliable. And if those lousy results don’t happen, well, at least you won’t be disappointed.

But where does it get you?

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was . . .