Choices, Our True Purpose

At a meditation group at the Albany Unitarian Church we were talking about the with feeling guilty about past choices which were 'unskillful'. Of course we need to let go past mistakes, there is no good from beating ourselves up about things we can't change.

Rather than guilt, a much more helpful feeling is true remorse, a deep regret for any choices we have made which did not have the outcome we would choose combined with a firm commitment to reform, to make better choices in the future.

However, I started comtemplating how improtant the commitment to real chance was. In particular what if didn't have the ability to actually make different / better choices in the future. For example, what if the things I said hurt the feelings of the people around me, but I lost the ability to show restraint in my speech (as we contemplate aging, there are no limits to what skills we could lose). Could there be real remorse if there was no realistic possibility of reform.

That clarified to me the important aspect of the process. We need to learn from our experiences so that we can identify when we have real choices before us and also how take better / more skillful choices.

Of course one aspect of identifying our choices is recognizing when we don't have any real choices. If we lose our impulse control and can't control what we say then we need to learn not feel guilty or beat ourselves up over things where we had no choice. While an undesriable result may often result in a firm commitment to make better choices in the future (which is good), it may also result in an acceptance of those things which we can not change (and not beat ourselves up over it).

There is also the reverse problem of not recognizing all the situations where we have choices. It is, perhaps, just as unskillful to thoughtlessly harm others as it is to knowingly harm others (or perhaps not). In truth we have the choice of being a kind and compassionate person every moment of our life. We just need to become fully aware of those choices and follow them with consistency.

In reality we never have control of what happens around us (we only have input in the process) and we need to learn to focus on being the kind of person we want to be, maintaining an inward focus to have a truly joyous life. For those things outside of us, we need to learn to accept those things which we can't change and appreciate all the blessings we have in our lives.

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This page was last updated on February 15, 2015