Some people are fatalists; they believe that their fate was written by someone before they were born.
Others, on the contrary, are sure that at every moment of time they make a conscious choice and build their destiny with their strong and smart hands, controlling the present.
The second kind of people is the funniest.
If you suddenly relate to it, do you really think that you choose what to wear in the morning? Does it not depend on the weather, not on the state of your wardrobe, not on the number of new centimeters on the hips, in connection with which it is better to throw out a part of your wardrobe as a present than to wear it? If you subtract from the options of "free choice" everything that is cramped for you, everything that did not have time to wash, everything that does not go to a new hair color, everything that went out of fashion the year before last, everything that is not at all suitable for the weather and according to the situation, it turns out that you can wear one or two, but the second is worse, so yes, one.
All other occasions in life are the same illusion of choice.
Have you chosen your wife? Yes? And the women stood around you as candidates for Miss World in a round dance from which you could choose? Or did you have just one single girl in which it coincided that you liked her and that she liked you? And it didn't coincide very well, I had to adjust, but there were simply no others. There were those who you liked more the same way, but they did not need you. There were people in love with you, but you didn't need them. Maybe it seems to you that this sympathy of yours is your choice? Do you think that you could order yourself not to sympathize with your future wife, but ordered to sympathize? Hardly. The attraction arose by itself, everything developed almost without your knowledge, or rather without your volitional, conscious participation. You watched yourself more than you did anything seriously. Love is spontaneous, and sex is the realm of pure spontaneity. You can somehow tell yourself not to want more (and then, if you don't really want to, otherwise), but ordering yourself to want is definitely impossible. How did you make the choice?
Maybe you were choosing your profession? It is unlikely that you were talented in all subjects (average in all subjects - it could be). Whether you have talent or just ability, you knew from childhood that you would do something like this, and after school your choice narrowed down to one single university where you wanted and could go. The rest simply could not or did not want to, and there was nothing to choose. If you are so mediocre talented in everything that you really could go here and there, surely your choice was influenced not by your free will, but by something objective, external, coercive. This university is closer and the industry is a little more prestigious, there is a blat in the form of a familiar aunt Tanya and so on.
What people call "personal choice" is usually one or two options, one of which is clearly better. Or one is better, and the other is simpler, and the person tries on whether it is worth spending energy or it will do. It is not serious to call this dull counting with the loud word CHOICE.
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If your reflection is not zero, you noticed long ago that at the moment when everything looks like you are making a decision, the decision has already been made. It is predetermined by everything that already exists: your capabilities and objective circumstances. Your possibilities are very limited, and circumstances all the more depend on a heap of external things, so you don't have to choose anything. And if you still have the illusion that you are the blacksmith of your happiness and forge it, making a decisive and free choice in the present, you are just a fool, not a very thoughtful and attentive person.
Can we conclude on this basis that fate was written before your birth?
Of course not. Who the hell is interested in your fate? Imagine how many bacteria like you are born in the world every minute. Nobody is interested in writing your destiny, you write it yourself, as a screenwriter, based on the available budget. The more boring the story is, the lower the budget for the next episode and the worse the airtime, and the lower the budget, the harder it is to come up with something exciting. Try to come up with an action game for three rubles, if the main character is a balding gray collar, who has a grumpy ugly wife and a Khrushchev, but not his, but his mother-in-law.
But the main ambush is not even the budget, but the fact that you hardly have an idea about the main law of writing your destiny.
Do you know him? Not?
Now open.
In the present, no choice can be made, but it can be made for the future.
Everything that happens to you in the present is already predetermined, by 100 or 95%. But this was done not by someone from above, but by you, in the past. In the past, where your present was still the future, you had the power and ability to influence, choose which you most likely did not use, or rather used, but at random, carelessly and blindly. You could have chosen something better than what is happening to you now. But you were busy with the present, that is, already with the past. You have struggled with what was already predetermined, you have resisted and tormented by the illusion of choice. It seemed to you that you can influence the present. But you could only influence the future. But they didn't. And now that the future has become the present, you are again fighting it, again resisting and tormented by the illusion of choice.
You just have to live with the present. You need to live it, feel it, take energy, accumulate experience, become wiser and stronger, avoid excessive stress, temper yourself with moderate stress, but not resist the wave going on you. She will simply crush you and cover you. "Fate leads the obedient, but drags the disobedient." You need to step on the wave from above and maintain balance, no matter how big and evil it is, and if you can't step in any way, group up and wait it out, or deviate a little to the side so that the losses are smaller. But you should not fight the wave or command it to retreat as if you are the mistress of the sea. Will break.
You just need to live the present, getting benefit and pleasure whenever possible, and all your volitional efforts and conscious measures must be directed to the future!
While you are struggling with the current wave, a new wave is just being formed, and you have the opportunity to take part in its formation, and eventually learn to manage this process. In the latter case, you will truly become the author of your life and make a conscious choice. But even then not in the present! And in advance, to the future.
Remember which elements and mental functions are responsible for the past-present-future? I have given this diagram several times.
The future is the air, the mental plane, the plane of consciousness and will. The present is water, the emotional plane, the plane of spontaneity (!) And energy.
Anyone who tries to steer in the present limits their spontaneity. They tense, think, doubt, hesitate, toil, and as a result they get less of what they could get. The stream of the present must be surrendered. Not reckless, but with minimal resistance, with a straight back but flexible. Surfers and skiers will teach you, if you are not yourself. And if they are at least partially, you can easily transfer this scheme to the rules of life in the present. The present is the flow. It has already taken shape, it has been formed, do not fight with it with the help of your mind. With your body - yes, you can try to spring a little, but rather in the form of a game. In sparring with fate, not boxing is better suited, but aikido, you need to use the flow in order to strengthen your maneuver, and not just beat it like a pear. He is much stronger than you, you are just a man, and this is FATUM, FATE.
But when it comes to the future, you are the builder of your destiny. Let you act at random and blindly, write with your hind paw, you don't understand much about this, but you will learn to do it better if you turn your mind there, and not to struggle with the present.
Consider examples. You cannot choose what to wear today, because you have only two dresses in your wardrobe for the weather, but one is not enough for you. But you can choose what to wear tomorrow (after a month). You can tackle your figure and clothing choices for the next season.
You cannot choose a profession right now, you are hired for only one vacancy, out of all, wherever you would like to go. But you can learn something today and tomorrow the list of vacancies will expand. And today you do not really choose what to learn, the list of possibilities (and desires) is limited, but when you learn something new, this list will expand, because you will change a little.
As for the wife … Today you can no longer choose her. She is what she is or she is not at all. But tomorrow your wife might be better. Today you can do something that tomorrow will reduce the default and the wife will become friendlier, warmer and more playful. And if you are alone, you can choose the path of change today and these changes will give you new opportunities tomorrow.
One must be a fatalist in relation to the present, since this is already fate, but one must be a doer in relation to the future, since there is not yet fate, it is just taking shape. The pen creaks, leaving a new line about you in the Book of Destinies and what this line will be depends on you. At first, it depends to a small extent, as long as you are just learning to scribble there to write, but the better you master this very Doing, the more you will influence fate.
This, in general, is the main secret of alchemy (the Great Work, making a conscious proactive personality out of oneself, this is the only goal of alchemy, if you do not take garbage for alchemy). You need to understand exactly where the process of change is taking place. Tomorrow. And today - we reap the benefits yesterday. With gratitude, self-irony and a healthy dose of indifference, it is better to reap them.
Now imagine what most people look like. They look to the future submissively, like sheep fatalists, “what will be will be” (secretly expecting that someone will take care of them and give them). But they are struggling with the present with all their might with rolling pins, and tongs, and other torture instruments. They demand to abolish everything bad and give good, they beg, are indignant, indignant, cry. No, no, not like that, I don't want to, different, not this! Or they think, rack their brains, make a "painful choice." Late, relax. Take care of the future. It is still melted there, everything is in preparation and you can sculpt the shape you need. But you are so caught up in the struggle with the present that you have no time for the future.
Why do you think people have the opposite?
What about you? Do you manage to do it?