Sometimes we commit to things that take us down paths we wouldn't have chosen had we foreseen them. In the past I've incurred damage when I felt I couldn't back out of an initial commitment; that it was universally binding.
They rarely are. And even in matters where backing out implies a penalty, you're free to choose the penalty.
We tend to confuse anticipated blowback with lack of agency.
I had a teacher when I was young who told us that there are only two have-to's in life: you have to die, and you have to choose. Everything else is choice.
"What if someone points a gun at you?" we said.
"You can still refuse to do what he says."
"What if he shoots you?" we objected.
"Then you chose that. And if you do what he says, you also chose that."
I remember that some classmates had trouble with this notion, and petulantly rejected the teacher's point. But Zen agrees with him. Choice is always yours.
And any road, as I write this, guns aren't in play.
But I wouldn't bet on tomorrow.
These are karmic times. At such moments it's important to maintain a firm understanding of right and wrong, and what you owe.
What you have to do, and what you choose to do.
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got came from my dad. I was in high school, and on the horns of some dilemma.
For some reason, my dad – whose counsel trended to the brief and prescriptive – heard me out this time, as I explained my choices and why I feared I might be censured either way.
My dad nodded a few times, and after a brief silence, said:
"Well, in the end, it doesn't matter."
I hadn't expected this.
"What? Why not?" I asked.
"Because you're always going to get criticised. No matter how carefully you choose your course of action, someone's going to call you an idiot, or a jerk, or a traitor. There is literally no decision a man can take, about anything, that isn't morally reprehensible to somebody."
"Great," I said. "So what do I do?"
"You choose your critic," he said.
I raised an eyebrow, and he continued.
"Suppose you're walking down the street and a panhandler asks you for spare change.
"If you give it to him, I guarantee you somebody will say, 'Nice going, you jerk! You know he's just going to spend that on booze. You're keeping him addicted, undermining the economy, making it possible for freeloaders to live off society. People like you make me sick!'
"On the other hand, if you don't give it to him, someone else will say, 'You selfish bastard! You wouldn't go hungry tonight without that 75¢, but he might! You can't spare a handful of coins for a brother who's down on his luck? Even drunks have to eat. You're the reason life is so lousy!'
"So that's the choice: which gripe can you live with?"
In my life I've consistently found that this formula busts up ethical logjams like nobody's business. It doesn't always lead to the safest decision – to put it mildly – but it does generally reveal the one I'm least likely to be ashamed of later, even in the face of inevitable criticism.
My dad's gone now; he died in September. And since I don't have any kids of my own, I figured this was as good a time and place as any to pass on his thunderously effective mindfulness tool.
In these morally challenging times, when even the citizens of heretofore principled societies face dubious and potentially dangerous demands on their allegiance, this is the sort of advice we can all use.
(Adapted from Growing Up Home, copyright RK Henderson.)
(The following is an excerpt from "Rough Around the Edges: A Journey Through Washington's Borderlands." Copyright RK Henderson.)
Because the choice is ours.
Many years ago, when I was a student, I entered a supermarket. A lady stood out front with a coffee can, collecting for charity. She was a cheery sort, a plump, maternal woman with a rosy Anglican face.
Ahead of me strode a man in a green coach's jacket. "Would you like to give to the Church relief fund?" she asked.
His voice had all the silk of a snow shovel on wet asphalt.
"I was poor all my life, nobody helped me!"
Taken aback, the churchwoman bobbed, and he stalked past, shoulders hunched, fists jammed in his slash pockets.
I never saw the man's face, but his greying comb-over and spare tire are stamped on my mind.
I should have pulled out my grocery money, a single twenty, and handed it to her right there. I should have said, "Here's ten for me," and dropped it in her can, "and ten for him." But I didn't. In the moment, all I could think to do was raise an eyebrow, as who should say, "No good deed unpunished, eh?", and keep walking.
But the guy bothered me. He was rude. He was ungrateful. He was angry. It was years before I solved his riddle.
You decide what it does to you.
You don't decide what happens. When you're born, where you're born, who you're born, how you're born. Land slides, fields flood, markets crash, families fail, houses burn, dogs bite, lovers leave, people die. Dashboards dash and draught boards draught.
You take a number and you watch the wheel. Same as us all.
But you decide what it does to you. Whether it makes you hard or soft. Hot or cold. Mean or mindful.
Poverty doesn't do that. Pain doesn't do that. Heartbreak doesn't do that.
You do that.
