Dealing with Arrows: How Much Choice Do We Have Anyway?

I'm such a one for vacillating, it's taken me all week to consider my respond to the TSU Question of the Week. On a good and positive day, I believe we do have a choice about how we live our lives, but most of the time, I believe we have very little power. We're too shaped by social conditioning, culture, where we are born, and happenstance to really have much of a choice, and we limit many of the choices we have ourselves to be the person we want to be, or believe we can be, based on any number of factors. Choice has always been illusory.

Buddha told the story of two arrows - the first arrow is the painful one, the one we have little choice over. We can't help the family member that dies of cancer, or the freak storm that sweeps our house away in a flood. However, the second arrow is our real choice - how do we respond to that? Do we attach to, or identify with, the pain? Does it become the narrative of our lives? Do we give up and die? Do we choose to be angry and distrustful of the world based on one event or series of events, making that our ultimate truth?

Image Source

I visited my Aunt today for the first time in eight years, although she lives locally. Our families have been a little estranged, but ultimately, we're family, and in the face of crisis, we can let a lot of stuff go in the understanding when you put all that aside, love prevails. She's been shot with a few arrows over the last few months - retirement, close friends dying, her granddaughters moving away (she'd been raising them) - her whole life is changing, her entire identity. She's finding it hard to cope, and Mum had said she was a mess of anxiety and depression. I visited because my heart went out to her because I knew what it was like to suffer like that. It was a tender and beautiful afternoon as we sat in the sun pouring through the kitchen window and I held her hand whilst she cried. She feels pretty powerless right now, and pretty scared and very desperate for any advice I might have to help her manage this. I wonder about choice, when I think of her. Is it far to say she should have made the choice to do a little self study before this moment so she was able to cope with what came at her? Was it fair to say it was her choice to respond in a particular way to the first arrow when her limbic, base brain is basically in fight or flight mode, flooding her with cortisol, and her rational brain can't talk it down, no matter how hard she tries? Perhaps it's been a series of little choices that led her to this moment, ones that seemed insignificant at the time. Perhaps she's just been hit with too many of the first arrow at once, and she needs time to respond. Either way, my heart goes out to her. I'm glad I made the choice to turn into their driveway instead of ignoring her and going home - it was a hard afternoon, but I am glad I helped her.

We started watching David Attenbourough's documentary on climate change this week. It sure as hell wasn't my choice to be living on a planet that's been totally fucked by capitalist economics. We've always felt we chose to live a particular way because it somehow mattered - live green, eat local, grow our own food, be ethical consumers. Has it made a difference? Did we ever really have a choice against the huge powers that have shaped the world into what it is today? How much of this has been our individual responsibility? How much more should we have done? Could we really have made other choices to have prevented what was coming at us? It's easy to feel depressed and powerless.

There's a scene with bats falling dead out of the trees due to extreme heat. One heatwave killed 'a third' of a bat species in Australia in two days of record-breaking heat - almost one-third of spectacled flying foxes. It's harrowing. We are continuing to lose species due to the choices we have made as a collective whole. It's hard to count myself as part of that whole sometimes.

We're coming up to Australian Federal elections. Most of the people I speak to on Steemit are horrified that our voting is compulsory. It is difficult to be faced with a 'choice' between who to vote for or not when we can deeply reject the political system that is entirely self serving, corrupt and driven by self interest. Sometimes it feels we are choosing between two evils, and we've lost so much faith in the political system as it stands that to vote for it seems to go against what we're really hoping for - a new world order, as idealist or fuzzy as that may sound. BUT... it's not the worse system and everyone here at least has a say.

For the first time that I can remember, climate change is a huge part of this election. I am sceptical. More green promises that won't come true, I'm guessing. But I'll vote for the party who promises the most on that front.

I was chatting to Dad about it yesterday. I won't talk politics with them as it depresses me - and we are on the same side. Talking doesn't change the world. He agreed. Like me, he believes the main choice we have is to be the best we can be in our little lives, and be okay with that... because if we aren't, that arrow of suffering is gonna pierce pretty deep.

So our choice, in this moment to moment experience of life, is to choose to put aside as much of the influence of culture, history, politics, consumerism and media as possible. Be kind to others. Plant trees. Shop ethical, with discernment. Reuse, repurpose. Grow our own food. Love with all our hearts. Spread joy.

An essential choice to make, in the grand scheme of things. And one I can live with.

---

---

@naturalmedicine II Discord Invite II #naturalmedicine

Website | @homesteaderscoop | Discord Community

Discord 🧘About