Day 352 - The Mystery of Choice

Nancy Drew was my childhood heroine. I loved following the clues and solving the puzzles with her. I admired her intelligence and also her boldness as a female character; she was clever and every bit as brave as those ol' Hardy Boys. And she always seemed to make the right choice. Good, smart choices that helped innocent people and caught the criminals.

I also loved the "choose-your-own-adventure" books. Really, what a clever way to write a book! It was so tantalizing to have the outcome of the story right at my fingertips, to have my chance to make the choices and prove my own cleverness. Funny thing though, I could never just choose my own adventure. I would hold my finger at each crossroad of the plot and follow one choice all the way through to the end of the story. Then I would back up and change each decision, one by one, until I had figured out every possible end to the story.

The other funny thing is that I can not remember a single adventure that I ever chose in those books or what the outcome was. I loved the freedom and the concept, but rarely enjoyed a memorable satisfaction from the experiences.

It's the catch-22 of life, I think. We long for, live and die for, memorialize and idolize freedom of choice above all...and yet, when we are truly unrestricted, we suffocate under the mountain of choices and the repercussions of choice.

Choosing means you have to know what you want.
Knowing what you want means you have to know what you don't want.
Choice means a comparison, by default.
A comparison on a set of standards, a premise, a truth.
And truth becomes binding, claiming to define the consequences that accompany every choice.

So is choice really freedom?

As a Korean linguist for the Air Force (2004-2008), I learned a lot about the regime of North Korea, it's oppressive rule, and infuriating propaganda about the evil Western society. But the paradox of the freedom of choice still rose to the surface of my mind when watching a documentary about a North Korean defector who managed to escape to South Korea. While he was grateful for his escape and his newfound experience of freedom, one thing that he said haunts my mind. When asked if he missed anything about North Korea, he said:

The simplicity

and the quiet.

And once again, I am reminded that 

every religion formed, every regime escaped...

every bonnet donned, every burka discarded...

every prayer uttered, every lip sealed...

every oath taken, every promise broken...

has been done for the pursuit of that inner simplicity and quiet...more than for freedom or even happiness.

Oh, we desperately want the journey to be easy.

We want the choices to have guaranteed consequences:

Immortality (eternal life)                    

Victory                         

Peace                 

Validation

And Happiness

...all of it, for all eternity

But the adventure is not easy.

You do not usually get do-overs...

And the results are not guaranteed.

There are no universal absolutes of which we are unanimously convinced.

There are probabilities in a range of possibilities...but we don't really know how long the sun will keep us warm, if there is a heaven and a hell, when the housing market will bubble again, if racism will ever end, or if one god is more true than another god or no god!

We can bludgeon each other to death with our (s)words, but it does not change the uncertainty of life.

And yet we are all driven by a need to find this simplicity and quiet...

But how?

Do we restrict freedom?

Do we fight for more choices?

Are the Amish more right than the Mennonites?

What about the Muslims? And the Mayans? Or the Mitochondrial Eve?

There is no end to the questions.

However, within the data clusters of humanity, we can find clues:

(This is why I love Nancy Drew the most.)

• Life is an uncertain adventure.
• There is more than one path to choose from.
• We do get to choose.
• And no one else will ever live my life or walk my journey.

• We don't get to choose what the path will look like or where it will end up.
• We can't always be sure of the risks or the rewards.
• But we can always choose again - a different path - according to our own needs and experiences of simplicity and quiet.

And when we find a path that gives us enough of that inner peace we crave, we'll stay there.

That's why some of us stay Mennonites and why some of us leave.

It's why some of us only change so far and others go much further...

Because no one ever chooses to change 

until the pain of staying the same 

overwhelms the fear of choosing a new path.