You had NO choice in your birth and will have NO choice in your death, but in the chaotic and confused world you have been thrust into (and will one day exit), you must valiantly attempt to make good choices and the quality of your life between birth and death you will measure by the accuracy of all choices made...
...in-between.
Yet, you can NEVER make the exact right choice that will perfectly determine the future you desire, but you MUST always make choices and many will provide more than anticipated, while others will provide much less, but not one choice will EVER be exactly as predicted and planned for and such is the nature of all human existence (and some degree of acceptance is required).
To make the exact right choice would require you know how the future unfolds, but you can only predict how your future unfolds based on what has happened in your past. Obviously, this is an unreliable method of preparing a future, but it is the only method available to your mind and, because of its inaccuracy, it lends itself to symptoms of severe anxiety, panic attacks, guilt, anger and depression and the physiological symptoms that can accompany those mental states.
Nevertheless, you will grit and grind over the accuracy of the choices you make, based on incorrect choices made in the past and the variables (people, events, situations) that influenced the negative outcome of those choices. The negativity bias will insure that you focus solely on the bad choices, automatically filtering out good choices, demanding ever greater attempts to accurately predict and prepare in the present to avoid future failure.
The purpose of the neuro-circuitry of your enlarged frontal lobe (where all your values, standards, preferences, hence, where all decisions/choices 'happen') is to make accurate decisions/choices (allied with memory circuits that will never let you forget how you failed) to reap future rewards stimulating the reward circuitry of your brain, which allows you to feel good about your decisions/choices, thereby, feeling good about "you."
Logically, there is a strong desire to make the right choices/decisions as a means of generating that dopamine rush of brain-based well-being because, without the motivational stimulation of dopamine, you'd have absolutely no desire to get out of bed in the morning, let alone pursue future goals/rewards.
Yet, more importantly, dopamine motivates you to fully engage your LIFE, go to college, embark on a career, find a partner, have a family, make money, find purpose and create meaning, etc, etc., all involving the engagement and influence of other people.
But be forewarned, dopamine is the chief causative factor of all chemical and behavioral addictions and has the power to hijack brain systems resulting in dysfunctional and maladaptive behaviors.
There can be no peace in the present when the relentless desire to accurately predict and, hence, prepare for a future becomes an addictive compulsion that requires reality conform to your exact specifications demanding unreasonable control be placed upon variables that are completely outside your capacity to control (other people).
ANXIETY: The chronic, contractive psycho-emotional state of collecting information/data to make correct choices as a means of insuring a desired future in which complete control of the variables (other people) is a necessary condition of success in that future, but can never happen exactly as desired, simply because those variables are entirely outside your control, resulting in your increased persistence in asserting control, creating a backlash of resistance from those variables (people) that essentially leads to failure in attaining your goals.
Each failed choice in the past (years ago or yesterday) only reinforces the need to accumulate more data to insure the next choice made is unequivocally accurate and, make no mistake, failed choices are frequently blamed on the failure to control the variables (other people) demanding ever greater control be asserted in the future.
There is a place in your mind that you must eventually locate for relief.
It is a place that still loosely relies on prediction and preparation, but allows for failure. It is a place that, after all preparation for a future based on your predictions is complete, you can then move back into the flow of the present moment, thereby increasing the quality of your life RIGHT NOW, today, in this moment. It is a place that fully understands that life 'is what it is,' and sometimes 'sheit just happens' for NO clear discernible reason.
It is a place fully accommodating to the only constant variable you can ever rely on being true, factual and real...
...change.
Alan Watts - CHOICE
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