New Age Fallacy #3: "We chose our life"

A belief that has become popular in recent times is the belief that we chose the life we have lived.  Some believe that before we were born, we looked at all the possible lives we could live, and chose one of them, including the pain and suffering, because we wanted to learn the lessons that were there; then we were born, and forgot our original intent, and struggled through the trials we had chosen without understanding why.

When you think of it, it is a rather odd belief - why would we choose a difficult life, knowing that we would lose awareness of why we chose it and then suffer in ignorance over our pain?

Most people do not "remember" agreeing to live the life they have lived so far.  Most people find themselves in situations they did not expect, often painful and difficult, and have to learn on the fly how to handle it.  And, judging from the number of people who fall into resentment, attempts at revenge, self-defeatism, apathy, depression, and suicide because of the trials at life, it appears that this strategy of learning the lessons of life is not widely successful.

If we cannot remember having made a choice, then our experience of suffering is the same as if we did not choose.  A choice is a conscious selection of possible alternatives without coercement, and very few people who suffer actually consciously and freely chose to suffer.

We humans created this belief for some reason.  Beliefs do not become popular unless they touch something deep inside.  One possible reason is that it may help some people cope with the distress of seemingly purposeless suffering.  But a more poignant reason may be to fight the feeling of victimhood that we tend to have when life does us wrong, and there is no one to blame.  Victimhood is about believing we do not have any control or power to stop bad things from happening to us, and if we embrace that belief, we will tend to live in passivity and blame, rather than in power and love.

But the point is not about blame: it's about taking responsibility for doing something about our situation today. Just because you're responsible for your life doesn't mean that you're to blame for all that has happened to you. We often end up in the situations we're in through no fault of our own; however, it is our responsibility to use the power we have to make the best of  our lives.

Let me give you an example. When I was being beaten up by bullies as a kid, I learned to become passive and not fight back. I would let them beat me up until they got bored and went away.  It was a strategy that worked to some degree at that time, but does not work as an adult. There is a sense in which I had no other choice at that time. Given my background, my personality, and the religious beliefs I had been raised with, this was really the only option available to me. However, it was still a choice, my choice.  I chose to become passive. I actively made a decision on some level of my mind not to fight back. This is the difference between blame and responsibility: because I made the choice, I took power in that situation, and that means that today, I have the power to unchoose that same decision, and no longer be passive. I can choose to act differently today because I own the fact that I chose my initial response back then. There is no blame in this picture. Instead, it is a position of power. By owning the choice I made, I claim power today over my own life.

The confusion lies in when we mix up making a conscious choice with being to blame. If I say it wasn't my fault, they hurt me, I cound't do anything - I become a helpless victim of the situation. And then I tend to live in victimhood the rest of my life. Saying we chose our lives is an attempt to avoid victimhood. But the implications of stating it that way are very dangerous. To say we chose a life of suffering and abuse is a hair's breadth away from saying we were our own abusers.  Would we wish a life of suffering on those we love just so that they could learn something from it?  If not, why would we do that to ourselves?

There's the possibility that this belief is so popular today because of unconscious guilt, low self esteem, and the desire to blame ourselves for what happened.  By making ourselves the cause of our own suffering, we may be unconsciously satisfying a desire to be the guilty one, the one to blame for the suffering we have gone through.  Now we have someone to blame, and it is ourselves.

The flaw in this thinking is the belief that if something bad happened, then someone is to blame for it.  This is pure denial of the fact is that bad things sometimes happen for no reason at all. The rock that rolls down the hill and smashes your car did not do so because you needed punishment or needed to learn some lesson.  The parent who abused you did not do so because you deserved abuse.  It was actually not about you at all.  You just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There is often not a reason why something happened, and no pre-planned lesson to be learned.  But given what we experience, good or bad, we have the life and capability to learn things from it so that our power is increased by the experience, not diminshed.  We can walk out of a situation where we were truly helpless and learn how to gain power so that it will not happen again.  The learning comes because we make good out of a bad situation, not because we chose to go through the suffering.  There is unlimited suffering we could choose, if suffering were a good thing.  It is not. But we can learn from it when it does happen to us.

So, claim your life, take responsibility for making the best out of bad things that happen, and let go of the need to blame or explain why.

A call to humility

I have heard many, many tales of evidence of the supernatural - phenomena that defy any rational or known scientific explanation.  I myself have had experiences which I cannot adequately explain, and which could easily be used as evidence of spiritual forces beyond what is known or provable.  Many of the people who believe seem very sure, even adamant at times, of the validity of their beliefs.

But conviction is often nothing more than the inability to consider alternatives, and those who argue with such passion for their conviction often are unwilling to truly entertain the possibility that they might be wrong, that there may be a much simpler explanation for what they have experienced than the existence of spiritual forces.

The world seems to consist of two kinds of people - those who tend to accept personal experience as significant evidence of forces beyond the obvious, and those who prefer to stick to what is proven, scientific, or rational.

The world is full of mysteries that have not been solved, at least not to everyone's satisfaction.  From conspiracy theories to the existence of God to the belief that eating certain foods will cure cancer or that recycling will stop Greenland from melting, there are those who seem to want to believe in a world where special, exciting, extraordinary things can happen, and there are those who seem to find comfort in only accepting things that have rational, provable or at least likely explanations, and consigning everything else to coincidence or foolishness.

Extraordinary claims, in my mind, deserve a lot of respect. It is an all too common human fallacy to throw out inexplicable phenomena because it doesn't fit in with what we have already decided is true.  The examples of conventional wisdom that turned out to be untrue are numerous.  To keep an open mind means to consider everything, and to be very aware of the assumptions we carry that may cause us to discount beliefs that don't fit our comfort level.

But the flip side is also important to consider. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and it is definitely more exciting for many to live in a world of angels and demons and conspiracies and dark forces, than one that always consistently follows the laws of physics.  Why else would sci fi and fantasy literature and games be so popular, if we did not find them exciting?  That tendency can slant us towards believing something that we otherwise might dismiss.

In the end, humility is called for, both in skeptics as well as believers. It is a huge mysterious world, and none of us know it all. The conviction that the mystical is impossible, like the conviction that it is real, may be nothing more than the inability, or the unwillingness, to consider alternatives.