"Choices" look quite attractive. We feel happy when we have choices to exercise. We feel happy when we go to a restaurant and have choices to exercise with respect to the food we want to eat. We feel happy when we have choices of universities where we can study. We like to have more choices of the flats we want to purchase, and that's why we visit many projects and meet many brokers before buying a flat. In a choice matrix, there are two important factors. First, the information about the choices that exist. Second, what's the drive behind making a choice?
For example, when we visit a restaurant, we go through the menu before ordering food. Sometimes, we are in a hurry and choose the food we want to eat just based on the waiter's recommendation. Obviously, the waiter will recommend based on popular choices and feedback. However, he will not be aware of our taste, and therefore we may not at all like the food recommended by the waiter. Even if we go through the menu in detail, we may not be able to make any head or tail about the food on offer. It is because, just by reading the name of the item, we can't make out its taste. It is only when we have already visited the restaurant that we will know about a few food items. In that case, our choice will be dominated by our past experiences, and we will order something that we ate last time, or we will try something new. Trying something new is always a risk, and it may not suit our taste buds. Hypothetically, even if we have tasted all the food items of the restaurant, we will have to make a choice. Now it will depend upon the mood. Suppose we want to eat spicy food, our choice will be spicy food. Similarly, if we want to eat healthily, our choices will be accordingly different.
Thus, choice is always based on past experiences. We often want to repeat past experiences, and that's how we make choices. Sometimes, we lack past experiences and make choices based on our parents' past experiences. Parents may recommend a particular career option based on their own experiences, and we may select that option because we trust our parents and believe they know us well. That's why we trust their instincts and make those choices. There may also be cases where there is no past experience to guide us. For example, when we go to watch a new movie. In that case, we mostly go based on certain expectations. We know about the hero or the director, and we feel that the movie will be entertaining, and that's why we spend money with that expectation.
What are we trying to achieve while making these choices? We are trying to maximise pleasure, comfort, or safety. If that is so, why is an athlete trying to do so while taking all the pains of running a marathon? Information, while making these choices, helps us make better choices. So many children come to meet me for guidance regarding their careers. The first question I ask them is about what they want to get from their careers. Mostly, what they want is again largely influenced by what their society has told them to be good. Some want to pursue civil services as a career option, to get power, while others want to get social validation so that people call them champions and respect their opinions. Again, what we want while exercising our choices is influenced, to a great extent, by the society we are born and brought up in.
What is freedom in this context? Is freedom all about a basket of alternatives to choose from? Is it about having a choice to possess what we want to possess? Is it about achieving what we wanted to achieve? Is it about doing what we wanted to do? Or, it is about being aware that nothing is good or bad, right or wrong, and there is no choice in this world to make?
When Arjuna and Duryodhana approached Krishna to support them in the battle of Kurukshetra, did Krishna exercise his choice? No. He asked Arjuna to exercise his choice. Having exercised his choice, Arjuna got disillusioned on the battlefield. He had a conflict in his mind. He was very clear in his mind when he approached Krishna for support. There was no conflict in his mind about whether to fight the battle. However, when he reached the battlefield and watched his teachers and cousins fighting from the other side, he got disillusioned and wanted to run away from the battlefield. It was because his mind was divisive. It divided everything into good and bad. When he reached the battlefield, the cumulative bad outweighed the whole of the good he could see in the fight. But, Krishna was beyond all the divisions, and that's why he tried to tell Arjuna through the Bhagwat Geeta that nothing is good or bad. He asked him to do his swadharma without worrying about the results. When we do our swadharma without being bothered about the results, there is no choice. In that case, we are in a state of complete awareness, and we realise that the unit is a part of the whole. We realise that we are just a pass-through entity having the principal purpose of carrying out the will of the divine. Since we are aware of that play of the divine, and are in a state of complete merger, we may call it free will. In that state of awareness, there may not be any choice; rather, there may be complete free will to play with the infinite possibilities.
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