I stumbled upon this sentence in a book while browsing about in Borders last Saturday:
Will she find what she needs when she finally stops looking for what she wants?
One simple question that led to a whole lot of thoughts swimming into my head.
The most immediate thought was that Life is in itself such a huge irony. Even the luckiest person on this planet can’t say for sure that Life has always gone the way he wanted. Sometimes, I think this is what makes Life so interesting. Most of the time, however, I can’t help but think it’s a royal pain in the a**.
A lot of people don’t know this about me: I studied Philosophy for a year in university. In the first half of the year, we were taught Logic and Fallacies - that I had no problems. I’ve always prided myself as someone who’s quite good at picking out weak arguments and illogical reasoning. In the second half of the year, I think my professor was trying to teach us existentialism. Honestly, I can’t say for sure that the module was really on that - the whole semester went by in a blur.
But what stuck with me was the topic of free will.
A lot of people tend to ask, “If God was such an omnipotent being, why did he give us free will and left it to us to choose between good and evil?”
At 19, the way I saw it was that we humans have been given an eternal cosmic trick question. Yes, we have free will. But if we chose the wrong side, it’s game over for us. In this case, free will is not really “free”. It comes with a condition - choose something that God doesn’t like and you are trapped in hell for eternity. At 19, my retort was, “He might as well take the gift back.”
Then a friend put it into perspective for me:
“God gave us free will. Every time we are presented with a choice, we are free to choose which way to go. If our decision led us to a sticky situation, we would once again have to choose if we wanted to call on his help or not. For those who chose to turn to God for help and received it, they become witnesses to his greatness. Without free will, we would never know how good and merciful God really is.”
I understand you might need a while to digest the argument above.
Fast forward to the present. I understand what this whole free-will business is about. But it doesn’t mean I have to accept it.
While I believe in the existence of God, I have chosen to not attend church services. While I believe that I share a personal relationship with God, I have chosen not to keep it exclusive.
Faith in him has not given me the answers to some of my life’s most pressing questions. Over the years, I’ve explored alternative ways to find an explanation to why my life is the way it is. You see, my biggest problem is why the belief “Ask and you shall receive” doesn’t hold true for some of us.
I’ve asked and not gotten what I wanted. Sometimes, I would declare in frustration, “Look, just give me what I want. Even if it leads me to great misery eventually, it’s my problem to deal with. How can you decide to keep something from me just so years later I’d understand the big picture?”
To me, this is not free will either. If I’m free to choose, I should be free to want. If I’m free to want, he should provide (after all, he was the one who started this Make-A-Choice game). If whatever I wanted was a bad choice, then it’s up to me to choose if I needed his help. If everything led to a horrible end for me, at least I could say it was all due to my doing. If I had been kept away from the thing I wanted the most, how would I ever appreciate the error of my ways?
If I stop looking, doesn’t it mean I’d have left my life to the whim and fancy of Fate?
If I simply settled for what I needed, what sort of person would that have made me?
Why is hungering after something you want, a bad thing? Does it really blind you from what really matters? Does it colour your perception of things so badly that you will eventually fail to see the truth?
I don’t know.
Sometimes, I’m tempted to believe that I should stop looking and let Life show me to what I need.
Most of the time, however, I do believe Life would just be an empty shell if you do not hunger, desire and hunt for the things you want.
Which side do you belong to?
