30 Aug Loaded Statements: Conscious Choice in an Educated Life
While on vacation with his family last week, Fluent’s Director of Youth Development & Education, Dan Warren, took some time to share his thoughts about choices, endings and beginnings as the summer ends and he looks towards the start of the school year and returning to work.
The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is. – Marcel Proust
It is common to hear the phrase, “We are often blind to the things we are blind to.” We have choices about the way that we view the world, but choice is work. Viewing choice as work is something that denotes intentionality. We must be conscious that we have choice not necessarily on how the world is but how we think about our world. The reality is that often the world shifts away from our preferences to areas of unwelcome novelty whose arrival was beyond our control.
What may be more relevant than our opinion on the shift is how we respond to the change. How we decide to turn our choices and awareness into action recognizing that we are part of a system that is social and interconnected is a large part of that process. Taking simple steps toward appreciating and capitalizing on fundamental things in life illuminates the wisdom in simplicity.
Sometimes our recognition of options is obscured by deeply engrained self-imposed and/or cultural practices. Stepping outside convention and chasing the “what if” down the rabbit hole, especially when considering those aspects of life that are most precious, can be a valuable exercise to test assumptions, biases, and opportunity.
As we weigh our choices, our own rubric for comparison may prove helpful. Occam stated that “Entities should not be multiplied without necessity,” arguing that, all other things being equal, the simpler answer is the better one. Shifting between choices is often conceptually simple but practically challenging because it involves accommodation. This discomfort, even in the most welcomed changes, is worth our attention and patience.
Regardless of the work associated with change, it is worthwhile to be vigilant about noticing when and why our choices are now qualitatively different. New technologies, for example, can stretch horizons beyond anything that we could have previously anticipated and things that were not effective in the past are now possible in the future of now.
Even when we have made giant leaps personally, recognizing that we are embedded in a social system can illuminate that our priorities and resulting choices create intentional and unintentional experiences for others. If it is our intent for others to experience and explore the world in wondrous ways, then we must live in mindfulness that we affect and are affected by the choices and priorities of others. The major downside of choice is that failure is always a real possibility. How people decide to determine and digest failure is a key to growth.
Dan Warren is Director of Youth Development & Education at Fluent Research