Indecision

Cause and effect.
Cause and effect.

It all comes down to choice, swayed and influenced by everything and everyone you don't know who are edging you towards an outcome.

The phrase 'personal choice' connotative with the idea of free will, self-expression and individuality, is a concept that may not even exist. For a person to make a choice involves a multitude of factors, out-with their control. So where's the individualism? Where's the sense of self?

All matters of opinion tend to be second hand and without any real examination; the more complicated and important, the more likely it's not an individual opinion but merely an expression of tradition, culture and upbringing.

And so when you do achieve a sense of self, or at least convince yourself that you have, the practice of making a conscious and important decision is so utterly bewildering, difficult and confusing that it seems impossible and, ironically, you tend to canvass the opinions and thoughts of others to guide a decision.

When it comes down to it, the act of decision is no more complicated in the choice of breakfast as with marriage, career change or life and death. You have a defined and set number of options and the outcome, in hindsight, will always have been. You will have known nothing else.

And yet the torturous choice of a decision can be so far reaching and consequential.

I wish I had the mentality of my mother at times, who believes in a fate-like premise. Almost as a premeditated outcome in disguise as a free choice!

So in there free choice? No.
But the choice to employ the opinions of those you love and care about you in return is as close to free as you will get.