Free Will and the Quest for Happiness
How Much Choice Do We Really Have?
If you’d been asked whether you wanted to be born, would you have chosen your life?
It’s a very hypothetical question, I know, but bear with me because there’s a point to this piece.
I’ve always been drawn to the what ifs in life. What if I’d been born in another part of the world? What if my parents had been rich? What if my dad wasn’t mentally ill? What if I got to choose my IQ?
The questions are endless.
Life seems to be packed full of tiny little twists that make all the difference in how things play out. What if I was taller or good at math or was born 20 years earlier?
It’s the same with death.
Birth and death share many commonalities. They’re both random events dependent on many, many extenuating circumstances and influenced by the tiniest decisions.
What if I’d chosen to drive to California instead of fly?
What if I was deeply depressed? What if I grew up close to a factory that dumped toxic waste into my drinking water? What if I’d decided against walking to the store that day? Would I still be alive or would I be dead? Would I have been born with deformities, committed suicide, got hit by a car when I crossed the street, or gone down in a plane crash?
In just a matter of minutes, seconds, an off the cuff decision, the wrong turn in the road, and life changes.
I contend that it’s this powerlessness that makes people anxious, angry, paranoid, depressed, even conniving. On the one hand, we’re told that we’re creatures of free will, the masters of our own fate, in control of our lives, and duty bound to make sound decisions if we want to succeed in life.
Yet, how is that really possible?
We’re not handed a road map in life and are generally raised by very inadequate parents. No one asked us if we wanted to be born either.
The most important decision a person can make — to be or not to be—and we’re not consulted.
Sometimes, parents didn’t plan to have a kid and often they don’t want the kid even after it’s born.
Yet, life’s a gift. Right?
Is our free will a test? If things go wrong for us, is it our own damn fault. Maybe even a demon is trying to lure us down the wrong path.
Are we doomed to miss the mark?
Have you ever wished that you’d never been born? Maybe just skipped the whole bloody mess? We know that there are lots of people who choose to bale on life either by staying intoxicated or high. There are also a lot of people who end their own lives because they no longer feel like going through the motions. They used their supposed free will to put a stop to the chaos.
Or was that free will?
If we don’t get to choose our chemistry, the wiring in our brains, genetics, or DNA, then is that really free will or is it more like a simulation. The characters are created by the game player and then led through a maze with fairly predictable reactions to their experiences. It looks like an adventure, but it’s really just a computer game. We’ve been hardwired with certain responses and predictable behaviors.
You see what I mean?
So why am I bothering you with these kinds of questions? Why not just count my blessings, accept what I can’t change, change what I can, and think of life as a gift like I’m told to do?
Well, there are lots of reasons that I question what I’ve been told.
Humans remind me that they’ve been traumatized, for example. That gives me cause to rethink the big questions of life. It doesn’t take an emotional genius to see the anxiety on people’s faces. Yet, we’re told that happiness, especially in modern times, is our birthright and that if we’re not always happy, it’s because we focus too much on the negative.
I’ve never met a happy person.
Whenever I say that I’ve never met a happy person, I’m bombarded with cries of indignation. Often those cries come from the very people who’ve just spent a few hours sharing their trauma with me.
I’m a good listener.
Which leads me full circle to my original question. If given a choice would you have chosen to be born? True free will would require full disclosure so that we could weigh out the good, bad, and the ugly before making a decision.
Free will means nothing if we’re simply plopped down here without having first chosen to participate.
I know. I know. There’s a lot of what ifs in this article, but we’re talking about free will and the “gift” of life mind you. When it comes to the big questions — why are we here, where did we come from, where are we headed, and how do we best survive—the questions are complex and overwhelming.
We’ve been given almost no answers to the big questions.
All we really know is that we’re alive and traumatized to a greater or lesser degree. Our brains do a half-ass job of protecting many of us from a complete breakdown in the face of danger, threats, drama, and deep disappointments, but that’s all we’ve got.
We don’t have the free will we think we have, because we were never asked if we wanted to participate in this game of chance in the first place.
With all that said, humans still amaze me at times. When we’re at our best, we can solve huge problems and provide an enormous level of support to one another.
Despite our personal traumas, we get up each day and keep plugging away at this business of survival.
We’re not the masters of our own fate as promised, at least not in my opinion, but when we meet adversity, our will to survive often carries us through the worst of times.
We’re all dealt a hand or maybe it’s the random luck of the draw.
Some people clearly draw better cards than others. Some of us drop our cards, exposing our weaknesses. The game is high stakes. It’s live or die.
We learn to bluff.
The better we can bluff, the higher our chances of winning a round. What a feeling when we win, too. Each new round is a crap shoot, however. Winners take all.
While we’re playing the game, we drink and laugh.
Socializing makes us feel less alone. We didn’t get to choose whether we wanted to play, but because we were born, we automatically got a seat at the table. If we look to our right and to our left, we see that everyone is holding their own cards. We feel better knowing that someone is playing the game with us but nervous that there’s not enough good luck to go around.
That’s life!
Would I have chosen to be born if first asked whether I wanted to participate in this game of chance? I don’t know. I may have passed up the offer. After all, I have no memory of what I was doing for the eons before I pushed my way out of my mother’s womb. For all I know, I could’ve been having a much better time.
Who knows?
Or maybe I was asked if I wanted to be born and I responded with a big hell, yes, sign me up. Maybe I wanted to give this thing called life a go, so I chose to gamble everything on this one shot.
After all, I could get lucky.
Teresa is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
