Choice: the grand unfolding

On a morning when the "marine layer" is a heavy blanket of grey over Seattle and I'm working hard to experience my unintentional 6-month sabbatical from paid work as an enriching experience, I come across this jewel of a video about choice. In the video author David Foster Wallace speaks about the power of choosing to experience the sacred in our most mundane and frustrating interactions with the world. He talks about the value of taking a step out of an ego-driven "I am the center of the universe" perspective and choosing to see others with compassion, and to connect.

I listened carefully, because I find myself at one of those moments of choice in this very minute. Right now I could be miserable and frustrated, "unemployed" and disconnected. And right now I could gather my courage, reach outside the walls of the "I am miserable" version of the story, and tap the higher meaning of this moment in my one, wild and precious life (thanks Mary Oliver). Further, I can continue to choose in each moment for the rest of this day and for the rest of my life. I get to choose (and put my own fancy choice & and theory to the test!).

You could see your own opportunity to choose in each moment between misery and meaning as an "opportunity" with air quotes, so actually a burden and a royal pain in the ass. And/or you can see your opportunity to choose as the highest expression of the human spirit, as a thread in the grand experiment of free will that is unfolding in our universe. In the grand unfolding version of the story, we are each paradoxically bit players and the title act at the same time, which is a position beyond ego that is a bit slippery for me to hang on to for very long.

Being awake is hard work. Consciously choosing the best for oneself in a given moment is a lot harder than numbing out. David Foster Wallace knew this when he spoke the words captured in the video (based on a 2005 commencement address), and he knew it three years later when he took his own life.

I believe that being awake to choice is our calling, the great evolutionary leap of our era. And with that, I begin my day anew.