On Choice

Matilda Miraka
3 min readDec 25, 2020

Often we find ourselves torn between one too many options, trying our hardest to find the right path, make the wisest choice, the one that will bring us more happiness than the other. Often we see no other option than to just pray to a higher power to illuminate our way because we are just to a week to see for ourselves. Often we prefer to lie to ourselves thinking that what lies in front of us is way too complicated and hard to pick one side or the other. Sometimes we are such cowards that we do not make a choice at all, especially when it means that picking one means parting ways with the other forever. Because we are not ready yet to live with the loss, we are not ready yet to take on responsibility and thus we refuse to grow up by just not deciding, making this our little revolutionary act of resistance. Well like this we actually make a choice, the third one which means staying a child forever, living in fear of our own decisions and action, but what kind of a man does this make us? The no kind I would say because that does not make a man, what does is expressing his liberty by taking on responsibility, by picking leftover right because, well just because it is what he wants. There should not be a logical reason and explanation for everyone to understand, there is no need for that. All we are doing is trying to live our days the best we can and we do not owe an explanation to anyone. Why would we? It will be us who will lose sleep over the wrongdoings of our own, not anyone else, because for everyone else as soon as you leave their sight, you are as good as dead, you cease to exist. So why such unimportant beings should be allowed to weigh in on my way of living? Why would I give them the liberty to weigh on one side of the scale or the other when it is I who will have to endure that for the rest of my life? I could ask myself many of those questions, they would never run dry, but why waste the energy when out there is a beautiful day to be enjoyed away from everyone and everything. There are streets I haven’t walked yet, children I haven’t heard laughing and playing, hearts I haven’t touched. Why would I let the close-mindedness of “everyone else” picks my path, lay the foundations of my own life according to their beliefs? The fact that I am part of this society does not mean that I have to be a slave of it, that I have to think how they think and live how they believe it is best, that is only up to me to decide, and also only up to you. Because when we pick a path over the other, we take responsibility, we show the world that we are capable of thinking on our own, I know that is scary because if you do it once, you will have to do it again and again and keep answering to yourself that you did this, I know it is scary because there will be no one and nothing else to blame other than yourself. But tell me, isn’t this the beauty of liberty of having a choice? Isn’t it precious and incomparable to anything, to be yourself and not just an indoctrinated copy of the next person? No matter how long we try to postpone it, the moment will come that we will have to make a choice and accept the fact that we will never know whether it was the right one, and I think that is the beauty of it all, knowing that no matter what, that is the point of no return, from there you can only climb up towards the better you.

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