Free Will: The Choice Is Ours

We cannot control the circumstances that life brings to us, but we can control how we respond to those circumstances. Therein is Free Will. Not in controlling life itself, or success or failure, but in controlling our reaction to challenges and situations that life presents.

We go through life with the expectation that effort leads to results. If only it were that simple. Effort leads to character, strength, and the will power to never, ever quit. We view effort as the means, but in actuality it is the ends. It is the only thing that is real; it is the only thing that is meaningful to the soul. Results are fleeting and are founded in expectations, mostly material expectations. And expectations lead to suffering, because results are fleeting, uncontrollable, and are never enough for our egos.

But constant effort is noble; the highest form of which is effort without expectation. This is the yin and yang of life: strive with great effort but release all expectations of gain. Gains are fleeting, the soul is permanent and effort strengthens the soul.

When my wife was thirty she was diagnosed with advanced-stage breast cancer; we sobbed and sobbed, crying our eyes out we were so sad and scared of the unknown. How could this happen to someone so young; to a couple that was so in love, with a beautiful 2 year old daughter? Life had so much hope for us and here we were with the greatest shock of our young lives. My chest compressed when I tried to tell our friends the news; every time I tried I couldn’t control my sobbing.

We stayed in bed for hours and hours, day after day, not wanting to lose each other and not wanting to believe what was happening. How could it happen?

Slowly we began to emerge from our shells, realizing that living in denial, living in frustration, living in sadness was not living at all…it was worse than death itself…and then we came to understand that although we have no control over life itself, we can control how we respond it. And that depth of our character is determined by the depth of our experiences and our efforts. Our spirits are stronger than anything that can happen to us.

While we could not have known the outcome we knew that we could face it, whatever it would be, with dignity and strength. With great fortune, Carol fully recovered, had three more children over the next 7 years, and continues to be the love of my life to this day.

Life cannot be controlled but our response can be; and in that there is hope, dignity, and free will. Nothing can take that away from us unless we let it.