Empowering Choice from Childhood

So often, I see people operate as if they had no choice. I wonder: when do I do that, without being aware of it? I do believe that I always have some choice. I can't fully choose what happens to me or around me, though I can create a life in which I am less often faced with undesirable impacts from others choices. Always, I can choose how I respond...even if what comes first is a from-the-navel reaction, rather than a chosen response. In those cases I can, at least, choose to clean up any mess I made and apologize.

So where does it come from, this belief that there is no choice?

As toddlers, many of us were told not to be who we are. The message may not have been that direct but it was clear and frequent. "No, you don't hate him/her. You're just mad." Well, maybe I really did hate in that moment. But Mom is the authority, so I must be wrong. "That's not nice; don't do that." All I'm doing is finding out how loud I can yell and what is the highest pitch I can reach. Why is that not nice? Well, Dad's in charge, so I must be wrong.

Give that back. Put that down. Stop it. No.

For toddlers, the world is often one giant NO. Even if the messages were less directive and more polite -- Please put that down -- they still thwarted intent, desire, or action aimed at fulfilling what we wanted. Toddlers live in a pure, from-the-navel reaction to the world. I want, I take. I feel, I express. They have no filters, no ability to choose this action over that one...yet. But telling them No all the time doesn't help them develop the ability to respond, rather than react. When we limit the taking that follows I want or limit the expression that follows I feel, we fail to support development of the boundaries that enable the internal control called choice.

So maybe this is where the pattern of living as if there is no choice begins. All the choices were taken away from us when we were toddlers. All the power to choose was located outside us, in the Moms and Dads of Authority. And now, some of us are still establishing replacements for Mom and Dad in those around us: friends, partners, supervisors, clergy, police, lawmakers. And so we justify our behavior by keeping the locus of control elsewhere:  "She made me...." "I had to...."

But nobody can make me do anything without physically forcing me. Possibly, you are strong enough to move me through space, lift my arm and make it perform an action, while I don't have the strength to resist you. Rare indeed is this circumstance of "no choice."

Yes, others' choices sometimes change the range of mine. I can be fired from my job. My house can be taken by the bank. Someone can beat me, cut me or shoot me. I can be diagnosed with a deadly disease. Even so, I never have to do any one thing in response to these changes in my life circumstances. Until the moment of my death, there is, always and only, my choices and the consequences of those choices.