Making New Choices

The thing about teaching independent living skills is that, once the kid has the skills, they have a choice. If the kids never learn the skills, they don't have a choice. --My supervisor

If you're run by your mind, although you have no choice, you will still suffer the consequences of your unconsciousness, and you will create further suffering. You will bear the burden of fear, conflict, problems, and pain. The suffering thus created will therefore force you out of your unconscious state. --Eckhart Tolle

I heard the first of these quotes during day two of our two day start-of-the-year staff meeting and annual hazing ritual at work a few weeks ago. It was the end of the day, and the group was discussing the importance of independent living skills, especially for high school students with visual impairment. I won't say that I wasn't paying attention, but I will say that it was 2:45 in the afternoon and visions of lattes were dancing in my head when I heard my supervisor speak in such a way as to send me reeling out of my Whatever-Generation stupor. Hey, I realized, as my thoughts abruptly shifted from Grande Iced Caramel Macchiato-land, that's true, and not only for blind kids!

The second quote was channeled directly into my brain from Eckhart Tolle himself less than 24 hours later.

I'm kidding about this, of course, although I continue to marvel at how iPod earbuds feed sound into my ears in such a way as to occasionally confuse me into thinking that the contents of books such as The Power of Now are arising from my own brain. I will confess that I am loathe to jump aboard the Eckhart Tolle bandwagon on principle. I'm the kind of person who resisted Harry Potter forever, who didn't watch The West Wing until the series was over, who has never seen Pulp Fiction or Forrest Gump, except for maybe a few minutes here or there. I don't have cable television and I generally don't pick up the home phone (this means you can stop calling now, people who want my money). On one fateful day, however, I got curious, started listening, and found myself struck by much of what Tolle says, especially what he says about the concept of choice and how it relates to spiritual growth.

A lot of modern-day spiritual paths, especially those with something of a New Age or New Thought slant, examine how changing one's life for the better occurs through the knowledge and understanding that choosing one behavior over another is a matter of simply making a different choice, the idea being that a person's life can completely transform if they start to make different choices. We might be able to see very clearly that someone else we know and care about seems compelled to behave in a way that makes little sense to us. We may try to talk some sense into that person, try to get him or her to see it our way, and convince that person that they have a CHOICE, and if only they would decide to MAKE that choice, they would be able to lead a life filled with joy, peace, rainbows, and butterflies. We might also look at ourselves and doubt that we can change the fact that we're so judgmental, or that we just don't care about anything. We may wonder why the hell it's taking so damned long for us to notice the areas of our lives where we do not feel like we have choices and to see what new choices we could possibly make.

The problem with these ways of thinking, which I think both my supervisor and Eckhart Tolle allude to nicely, is that people are inclined to learn when they are children. It is second nature, and it is how they are able to grow so quickly and remember new information so well. If you have somehow learn along the way that you do not have a choice about something in your life, either through lack of exposure or active disapproval, you eventually come to firmly believe that you do NOT have a choice. As an adult, once this learning is ingrained, it takes some time to recognize that we have more opportunities for choice than we may have thought, and it takes more time to practice making the new choice.

I think this is all helpful to remember when dealing with the issue of making new choices in life. We're fighting old patterns of behavior and old conditioning, and it takes time to notice that, accept that, let go of that, and acquaint ourselves with a new way of being.

By treating ourselves with kindness for our perceived shortcomings and failures through all of this, we can gradually help this learning process along by making it all right to try something new, fail at it, keep trying, and move forward into a way of life we may have always longed for but haven't really thought could be possible.