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Choices...

Everyday we make choices. Big choices, small choices, green choices, important choices, insignificant choices....but we make them without realizing that we have a choice. So many times the choices we make are not real choices but are made for us by forces outside of us. First and foremost we are persuaded by advertisement, through billboards, pop ups, television, newspapers or by advocates who have already realized their power to choose. Without educating us they advocate for their choice and we are swayed. Strong advocates for atheism, going vegetarian, going green, going organic, the list goes on. Then there is a modern and current sway which catches us unawares. You are caught in the domino effect and don't even realize your own conversion. And its a strange conversion because you always were what you suddenly start claiming but now you have to define your self, you cant choose to live in the border area, you have to declare. Not only that you have to now start defending your position, even if its liberalism!

And all these choices are seldom our own choices. We are made to make these choices suddenly, in mid sentence or mid aisle. We make them watching a film or reading a book. We make them in response to something or the other, in a flip second. But once made they start effecting all our other choices and suddenly become a paradigm through which we see the world, it narrows the world for us.

What if we actually became aware of our own power to choose?

Comments

MOHABBAT said…
one thing i still have'nt been able to figure out quds after reading ur post! do we have a choice or don't we? u tell us we have one and then u negate it as well!!! make up ur mind ma'am!
4 January 2009 at 07:38
مایون said…
I believe its not a coherent argument if I was not able to clear this significant point, but it boils down to this that choice is a liberation but it has to go through a process, it has to be adapted and then adopted knowledgeably. Any thing less then that is not a choice but a sway with the current, an influence which can be permanent and damaging with long term effects as it colors all your future choices. A choice is a choice only when its made consciously!
4 January 2009 at 22:53
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