Portrait

this is one of the essays i wrote for my applications. they give you a host of options on what to write about, significant people, experiences that changed you etc etc. and the final one is ‘a topic of your choice’. this essay will, invariably, come under that. it needs to lose about 200 words, and i’m eager for any feedback anyone can offer me. i plan to write a few essays so that i will have more than one to choose from when it comes to selecting the one that will actually accompany my applications. this is attempt number 2, and i definitely like this better than the first. what say you?

A topic of your choice, you said. Choice is a funny thing. What is human existence, but a series of choices, choices made by us, choices made by others on our behalf? Choice itself is an overwhelming burden, just as much as it is the blessing of control. On one hand, I can decide. I can choose how my life is going to be lived; I can choose which things will change me, and which things won’t. I can choose what I’m going to spend my life doing, and which causes are worth my efforts, and which are simply not. I can choose. On the other hand, I can go wrong. It is a huge responsibility: the burden of choice, the pressure of decision. How am I ever to know that the choices I make are the right ones? What will I do if later, I regret the choices I make? How can one fix a wrong decision? How can one right a wrongly made choice?

Our ability to choose sets us apart from animals that only have their instinctive nature to live by. Our ability to choose sets us apart from even each other. But, we will never have the comfort of knowing that the choices we make are the right ones, the best ones. After all, what are ‘right’ choices? What are ‘safe’ choices?

Our choices depict a lot of how our lives turn out, besides the usual dealings that even an Atheist like myself must believe comes down to fate or something like it ; birth, death, ageing. But maybe human weakness is larger than even the power to choose. Maybe choice has less control than we’d like. Emotions; often, we choose how we feel, subconsciously as it may be, making the saying ‘it’s in your head’ a little more true than we care to admit. We can choose to be angry, happy, sad, defeated, elated. But can we really choose to fall in love? Can we really choose to refrain from being hurt?

We can choose safety over risk, we can choose health over illness, we can choose stability over danger, but does the general uncertainty of life exceed all this? Sure, we can defiantly refuse to take up smoking due to its injurious effect on our health, but can we prevent ourselves from being run down by a car while walking on the road purely by choice? Sure, we can tell ourselves bungee jumping is simply too unsafe to be engaging in, but can we stop ourselves from being taken by illness? Is there any way to be entirely safe, safe from harm, safe from hurt, safe from pain? Can making the ‘right’ choices really protect us from the consequences of merely being alive?

Our lives are wrought with our endless efforts to find answers to these questions. With every choice we make, we take a little blind leap of faith, hoping with against hope that we are right. Sometimes, most often because we like to make it so, we have made the right choice. Sometimes, we regret it. Sometimes, you can fix it and have another go. Sometimes, you just have to learn to live with it. Life goes on and we all end up wiser, a little jaded, a little older.

We can choose to feel damned by the uncertainty, but we can choose to revel in it, to live while we can, and do as we please for ourselves. We can choose to be scared our entire lives, but we can choose to celebrate the beauty of what is unknown, to regard it always with positivity. We can choose to be hopeless, but we can choose to make the most of whatever parts of our life are governed by our choices, and for the rest, to be hopeful.

Life is like making an entire journey with one headlight, never really knowing what’s ahead, never really seeing what’s behind, never really knowing for certain that we’re taking all the right bends and swerving in all the right ways. Despite all these setbacks, that one headlight has proved sufficient to human kind time and time again, and we must not forget that.

I chose to write about choice itself, to question what we are mostly afraid to question, to challenge my own beliefs and disbeliefs, about God, fate, life and the inevitable suffering we must all endure in some form as humans born into this cycle. I chose to try and interest you, perhaps even provoke you. Will you choose to read this and let it invoke something within you, a sense of panic, better yet, a sense of hope? Or will you choose to put it aside and never think of it again? And, in your choice, I must place my faith, I must gamble my luck. I trust you will make the choice you were meant to make. That is all I have, and that is good enough.