The Myth of Free Will and Independence, and the Truth of Community

In a lot of spiritual circles and self-help communities, folks with good intentions often share words of advice meant to empower others to step into their "free will" and "independence" in order to manifest the life they desire. Over the course of my life I've also witnessed many lines from movies and TV shows as well as comments by people on social media and even friends or acquaintances sharing beliefs which usually go something like "you're the only one you have to blame for [life circumstances.]" This is often followed up by someone "taking control of their lives" in a montage or a poignant moment. I think sometimes we humans like to pretend we're solely responsible for the way our lives turn out so that we can avoid the fear of existing in a world where we don't have control over everything that happens to us. It's almost comforting to believe that had we made different choices we could have avoided negative happenstance. Maybe it makes it easier for some to swallow sour experiences. In some cases maybe it's even 100% true, but almost always moot by that point.

But reflect for a minute if you will. What does your life look like? What kind of circumstances were you born into? The good and the bad, all of it, everything which has culminated in your identity and life experience up to this point. Now imagine, what would your life look like if you had been born to someone else's family, or in a different country? Though we may never actually be able to know the answers, we can picture what differences could have marked our lives if we had a completely different environmental setting.

-Did you grow up in the woods and learn how to garden and tend to animals for your survival? How would you be different if you had grown up in the city without a backyard and gone to markets for food and only interacted with animals at the zoo?

-Did you grow up with a familial or social support system with access to emotional and financial assistance to accomplish things like getting your first car, going to college, starting a business, or starting a family?

-Did you spend a lot of time at libraries and parks and museums and being exposed to the wider world? What would it have been like to grow up knowing the closest coffee shop to you was 35 minutes down the road?

-Did you spend your school years building social skills with your peers in clubs and groups? How do you think your life would have been different if your school was too small or underfunded to have those groups, or your family couldn't bring you there and back to participate?

-Did you grow up with imperfect but present parents who told you they loved you and tried their best to give you a good start in life? Imagine for a second being the child of an adult(s) who was unable, unfit, or unwilling to parent, and actively caused you harm while you had to find yourself food and water and sometimes even safe shelter?

-Have you been mentally and physically sound and able your whole life so far? How would your life change if you were disabled by a car accident which left you without the the use of your legs or with brain damage?

-Have you only ever heard the sound of gun fire during hunting season out in the country? How would you have developed for the rest of your life if you grew up hearing shootings or bombs daily as a child, just a few hundred feet from where you ate, slept, and went to school?

We don't all start with the same circumstances in life. And we don't get dealt the same circumstances throughout our lives either, nor can we eternally prevent negative experiences from entering our lives. I've often shared in conversation with friends that I believe the capacity for us to feel sadness, anger, and disgust correlates to our experiencing these "negative" emotions in life. For instance someone might be sad about not having a limo pick them up for prom because they've been imagining this evening their whole life; and someone else is sad they weren't able to buy a suit or ticket to get to go at all. Neither has a right to being sad more than the other, they simply feel emotions in accordance with their values and the way they are perceiving their circumstances. We won't ever get away with not experiencing the whole spectrum of emotions without damaging ourself or others in the process, so instead of looking at things from the point of personal satisfaction, we can pivot our perspective to that of collective care; and even when we experience inevitable personal failure, dissatisfaction, or upset, we are still held in community with love, respect, and dignity.

Compassion for ourselves and others will always improve lives more effectively and kindly than criticism. There is a part of me that still believes we can out-good our way from the bad, that if we can do everything right or the way we're supposed to, bad things won't happen to us. But the bad will always be a part of life, and the expectation of perfectionism can cause us harm and can cause us to harm others. We live in a world with billions of other people, billions of ways of being brought up, billions of ways of being loved, billions of ways of being hurt. It's almost like we're not solely responsible for our lives at all... We live here with each other, and whether or not we like everyone around us, their survival improves the likelihood of ours. What if we switched from an individualist mindset of free will and taking responsibility for our own lives and instead, knowing that the collective crafts our life experiences regardless, think about our contribution to the collective wellbeing? This in itself may not be a new concept, but executing it on a large scale while maintaining the sovereignty and wisdom of individuals may be quite a modern and aspirational social construct.

The global society is still being wounded by and suffering from colonialism and fascism, which have been teaching us how to perpetuate our own dehumanization for centuries now. If you often feel overwhelmed by the state of the world and the tasks you feel may be necessary in order to accomplish forming a more global sense of wellbeing, you are not alone. This awareness of the growth the world still has yet to move through is a super power, don't let it discourage you. Let your awareness of the world at large guide you in your actions until you can guide others and be guided by others. The world is so much bigger than we comprehend; much too big for us to live in as if we are alone. All of the world's problems could never be up to one person to fix, but even our own lives are too massive to be all up to just us. All of the world impacts our life circumstances; so it would stand to reason that we cannot tackle our life circumstances alone.

Rather than determining failure and success on personal levels of accomplishment, we can empower our community by establishing a respectful minimum level of care, dignity, and respect for all individuals regardless of location or identity. While I regard responsibility as one of my core personal beliefs, one cannot take responsibility for circumstances out of ones control. Free will is only half a truth. We have to remember the context of existing within a world of other people with their own wills, all jostling against and mingling with each other, creating consequences not always foreseeable. We get to make our own meaning out of the life we live, and when we organize our actions to move in tandem with each other we are able to contribute and contrive to the betterment of the collective on our individual levels, and create a legacy that is bigger than any one individuals' can be.

If you are feeling alone, isolated, or helpless at this time in our collective journey, please reach out to your local community action organizations, and if you don't know any, reach out to me and I will help you find them. You matter and your life is important. Don't succumb to the extremes of light and dark; I promise we can hold them both and we will be better for it. There have always been people with soft hearts making moves for the betterment of humanity, and their will always be people with hard hearts keeping humanity back from growth. Remember that we are all capable of both, and adopt a practice of compassion and acceptance before operating from a place of judgment and denial towards yourself and others. Whatever happens, we will have each other. Take care of yourself, your community, and your environment. <3