From that quote on the power of choice, let me first segue a bit to my favorite dictum from St. Augustine: “Deus qui creavit te sine te, non salvabit te sine te” (God who created you without you, cannot save you without you).

What St. Augustine meant may be deduced into two parts: first, when God created us, he did not consult us, hence it was not our choice but God’s; second, when it comes to our salvation, God cannot save us without our free consent and cooperation.

Ostensibly, the exercise of choice belongs to the faculty of the will (which God has deemed as free). But not exclusively with the will, because the intellect serves as operative requisite in the act of choosing or decision-making. Rightly so, we can’t simply make a choice unless we are aware (or conscious) of what to choose about. Thus, when God created us, it wasn’t within the scope of our choice as precisely we were not aware of it. 

And, in the domain of intellect, here’s a classic Latin dictum that I learned back in the seminary: “Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu” (There is nothing in the mind that does not come from the senses).

But this empiricist stance of epistemology (John Locke’s “tabula rasa” and Aristotle’s “empeiria”) is opposed by the rationalist or deductive school of thought. Thus, the antithetical positions between Plato and Aristotle, between Thomas Aquinas and Augustine.

In the realm of free will, there are two contending sides. One is the libertarian view, which argues that actions are freely chosen by an autonomous agent. The other one is the determinist view, which argues that our behavior is caused by a combination of genetics, past experiences, and current circumstance.

A host of factors

Enough with the philosophical sauntering. I just want to underscore the point that apart from sense experience and knowledge, there are a host of factors that come into play in our due exercise of free choice or decision-making: previous experience, cognitive biases, individual differences, belief in personal relevance, and level of commitment. Behavioral experts would even proffer the “science” of heuristics, or “rules-of-thumb to guide decision-making based on a more limited subset of available information.” A classic example of this is, when choosing between different brands of food items at the grocery store, you simplify the decision by going with the brand with which you had the best previous experience. 

In layman’s understanding, choice is the activity we initiate in our brains to reach an outcome. This outcome can take various forms such as decision, judgment, assessment, or behavior. In this context, hence, choice is theoretically broader than decision-making or the “process” by which one reaches a decision.

Now, there’s no denying that as long as we’re alive we’re always beset with choices (even including, right now, your choice of reading this article or your choice to agree or disagree with my opinion and insights).

But what about if we’re inevitably faced with life’s immensely hard choices—between right and wrong, between life and death? Or if we’re pushed to the corner of having “no choice” at all?

Insights

Here are some profound insights.

1. Often, when faced with equally painful options, we easily resort to “I had no choice,” but only to escape responsibility or be held accountable for our choice.

Paraphrasing Audrey Thompson’s blog in medium.com, instead of claiming our own power by saying “I decided to” or “I chose to,” we resort to saying “my only choice was to” or “I had no choice,” implying that we are not responsible for our decision, its outcome, or its consequences. 

Rather than see ourselves as active participants and authors of our own lives, we blame external forces (a person, a company, government, social mores, economy, religious dogma, cultural history, or even our childhood) for the “choice-less” situation we are in.

The fact is that, according to Thompson, when we look closely at how decisions work, we can see up to eight choices at any given time: this one, that one, both of them, neither of them, some of this one, some of that one, some of both of them, and something else.

2. Even in such a point of no-choice, there’s still freedom. 

My favorite author (philosopher, psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor) Viktor Frankl said it wisely: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

We may get stuck in the worst of situations, but we can always remain free. Because our mind belongs to us. Our thoughts are ours only, and the attitude we choose determines the outcome of our situation.

Frankl said that in the concentration camp, “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future—was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.”

But rising above the suffering, choosing to turn a tragedy into a triumph—that’s what Frankl calls finding your meaning in life. 

3. Love is the fundamental choice and highest form of meaning.

Again, Frankl said, “The truth is that—love is the ultimate and highest goal to which man can aspire. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved.”

The meaning of life is found in the connections we form with others. Love gives us something to live for, something that provides hope and comfort even in the most insufferable of conditions. In sum, indeed, life is a choice. Let’s choose to live, learn, love and laugh.

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But, on the contrary, I find the following words from an anonymous sage on social media profoundly captivating:

“Happiness does not create gratitude. Gratitude creates happiness. Gratitude is your foundation for all that you want. It is inevitable that you will have to overcome obstacles, so you must stay strong and humble. If things don’t work out for you, or you don’t get what you want, you learn to be more appreciative of what you already have.”

I like to think then that, most likely, being grateful for what we have can help us manifest what we want.

But even if we don’t manifest what we want, by itself, being grateful for what we have can already make a mountain of difference. In other words, being grateful for what we have is happiness itself.

Yes, an ounce of gratitude even for the little that we have is already a pound of happiness. It can be said then that nobody, nobody at all, is ever deprived totally of happiness! So true, because nobody, and nobody, among all of us who’ve been lovingly created by God, is totally deprived of anything. We’re not nothing at all. 

Virtue of existence

And, hence, by virtue of our existence or “essence” (if not, “being”), we have every reason to be grateful—and thus be happy. What makes people unhappy is their craving for more, and not being appreciative of what they already have.

We may differ in terms of “having” or “doing.” But we’re neither merely a “human having” nor a “human doing.” We’re defined neither by our “position or status” nor by our “possessions.” What makes us equal under God is that we’re a “human BEING”—a being equally created in all aspects, a being endowed with intellect and free choice, a being worthy of a happy and meaningful life. 

Even in physiological terms, contemporary science claims that gratitude can generate smooth, rhythmic heart coherence. According to the California-based HeartMath Institute, a non-profit research organization dedicated to neurocardiology, accessing coherent heart rhythms through the conscious generation of gratitude has numerous health benefits, including increased resilience to stress, a higher degree of foresight, improved memory, clearer thinking, more energy, and even greater hormonal balance.

Not only do we gain benefits from being grateful for what we have or for the things that serve us—but also from the things that challenge us. American chiropractor, Dr. Tom Pastor, who focuses heavily on the influence of emotions on physical conditions, explains: “Gratitude is about appreciating the elements of any situation. It’s easy to be grateful for things that directly benefit us. It tends to be more difficult to be grateful for a struggle. If we can learn to develop the ability to be more appreciative of the things that challenge us, we will be stronger and more adaptable in the long run.”

The late America’s Got Talent golden buzzer winner who succumbed to cancer, Nightbirde (Jane Marcrewski), cannot be more right when she said: “You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.”

So, be happy we should! That is, by being grateful for what we have, and even for our trials and struggles. And the more we are grateful, the more we will find things to be grateful for.

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