Being able to see a third option, way or answer gives greater freedom than just looking at a way out to "left or right".
In many of the things we have to choose, opt for or decide on every day, we think we only have two possible answers.
From politics to our breakfast. Everything is made up of decisions, some much more important and decisive than others. But all of them have to be made. Our minds feel they always have to balance two decisions. Make the best choice at the moment. And for that choice to be beneficial, if not at the moment, then in the medium or long term.
From an early age we learn to say yes or no to a certain situation or choice. But do we have to stick to just those two options? And isn't there a third?
Are we always obliged to choose between just two things?
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We may not like white or black, and prefer gray. Why can't there be gray in the choice? Why does everything have to be so watertight and so closed into two possibilities?
Having two options is not an unconditional prison. Obviously. Some people can't even choose between two choices or paths. Then we can consider that we don't have any degree of freedom.
There are paths, however, that we can't choose not to take. The path of life. It begins when we get here and we don't know when it will end. One day that end is certain to come. We just never know it, or rarely.
They say that when we enter our last decade of life, we realize, through our responses and the way our body interacts with the environment, that we are literally living our last ten years in this reality. As far as I know, it's the only reality that has been proven to exist. Although I believe there may be more to it than what is palpable or visible to us.
One of the fears I have is that as I enter my last decade, the final decade, I will still have many things to live for and to experience. That I have many things to say and to share. Time never stops. It may even seem that we have some control over it. Which is absolutely ridiculous. We can only hope that we'll still be around when we book a dinner in a year's time. Who knows if he'll be around? But it's good not to think about that, it's true. Constantly being aware of our finitude would be more than a prison, it would be torture. We wouldn't be able to act in the face of the smallest challenges, and we'd be stuck thinking about all and some of the consequences that our decisions or actions could lead to.
Let's just keep our minds open to finding our way through a world full of borders, extremes, black and white, an infinite new palette of shades of gray that exist out there, waiting for us to choose them. And not just see life in two colors.
Thank you for reading my little daily reflection.
Free image from Pixabay.com
