Not choosing is an option!

All my life everyone around me just told me that I have to choose this or that. The people who surrounded me were so simple, that they only saw logic in choice.

What I say about this is: this is bullshit. Not choosing is an option. Let me give you some simple examples.

There is the situation when you are with your friends and they are arguing about something and they are divided into two groups about the topic. Then they tell you to choose. For you the topic means nothing, you do not care about either of the choices, so you do not choose. Usually this causes conflict, because your friends will tell you that if you are not with them, than you are against them. Bullshit! You just don’t care. I personally had a lot of conflict from this, since people around me cannot understand that I do not choose because I am indifferent in the topic. All the choices are equally good or equally bad.

Now the example I gave is in a small group. What about the country we live in? Authority does not like you to not choose. In the world of infinite choices they want you to choose. Either a product or a political view, you are forced to choose. I say, Bullshit! I will not choose. I don’t care about politics and when I want some product, I simply get it, I do not spend hours searching for better offers. I know what I want.

Okay, now we arrive to the more spiritual part of not choosing. Think about your life: you are always forced to choose in everything. Every decision is actually a choice in life. In small things you do not feel the consequences so much, but there are really hard life choices: do you stay with your father, or mother after they divorced? Do you marry that girl, or not? See, not choosing is an option.

Not choosing means anything can happen. Can you understand the freedom in that? When you are faced with a situation where you have to make a very hard choice: simply don’t do it. Who said that you have to? Nobody can force you. If you just step back and observe, you can quickly find out which choice would have been the batter.

Oh, you say if the opportunity comes and you do not choose, you will lose it? You sure feel that way in the moment, but there are no bad choices in life. No matter what path you take in life, they are all the good path. That is why not choosing is also an option. You simply take the stress off your shoulders and walk away. Let the choices solve their issues between each other.

When you do not find the goal of your life: become a benevolent bystander

Okay, this will be simpler than you would think. I will not talk about the magic meaning of life and things about these great unanswered questions. I will keep it simple.

I want to talk about that inner question, and also drive, that pops up in us from time to time and makes us go forwards. And this is: why cannot I achieve this and that in my life?

Now, this usually comes from jealousy, because we want to achieve what someone else achieved and we deal with other people instead of looking into ourselves.

I want to tell you some personal experience in order for you to understand how the search goes. Since my main occupation is programming, I tried out many things in this field to make money or become famous. It simply does not work this way. If you are not meant to do a thing, you will not, or very hardly succeed. When not walking on the right road, things just do not add up.

When you want to achieve something in your life, the first question should be: is it for you? Is it worth putting in energy, if you are not good in that field, or if it is not meant for you? Of course, if you want it, go get it. But life is much easier if you do what you are meant to do. For example I cannot keep up all the blogs I wanted to bring to glory, because I cannot come up with enough original content. I cannot come up with a super application or software package to sell so I can make a lot of money. Simply it is not meant for me. The only thing that always made me happy and was good in is writing poems. So, what is the deduction from all this?

Since I am pretty good in what I do (programming), I make money by working for others, realizing their dreams. At first this bothered me a lot, because I was not able to achieve my own dreams. Tho things changed: I realized, that I have no dreams (this is dead serious, I had some thoughts in my head, but no life-long dreams), so what should I achieve, if there is nothing to achieve? The second thing was the change of my view about the world. After a deep depression I realized, that the only real value in life is enjoying it, even with everything bad in it.

So, I realized that probably the meaning of my life is to help others with my knowledge. To make their dreams come true. And every time I do so, I feel good and happy for them, even if I get no fame out of it. What if my goal in life is not to pursue my dreams, but to be a bystander, observing and helping where needed?

Since probably I am not the only one thinking about this, I want to tell you all out there, the ones who do not find meaning in their lives because they cannot achieve this or that:

“Do not despair, just enjoy life how it is. Stand by and observe. If you can help, help. If you cannot help, do nothing. The meaning of life is not always being the best.” (Gadratil)

How someone can change totally because of a small thing

People change in many ways. Experiences always change us a little bit, and the more experiences we have, the more we change. However, with age, the number of changes get high and we change harder and harder, because we build a lot of walls around us and we enforce the existing ones. Every experience we live makes our walls stronger. This is why people get stubborn with age, they change harder and harder.

There is however a property we can learn or encounter as experience. This is openness. If someone is open to change and can hold to this personal property, one can always change in very unexpected ways.

For example: I was always a person, who liked challenge, liked to travel and experience new and exciting things. But, because of a small experience I had, I changed. Now I want to stay near my home and build a future. It is a totally strange thing for me, to change in this way.

I thought about this a lot. I still do not know the cause, but it has to do something with the realization that I enjoy creating useful things around me. And traveling and just messing around is not creating any value.

So, this small realization played the main role of a huge change.

I am fairly certain that other people have such changes in their lives and this usually happens when one has enough experience to not thrive for the great mysteries of life anymore, but just enjoy every minute of it.

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes. (Hugh Prather)