The privilege & weight of choice

They say happiness is a choice. Or we all have free will to change our lives if we really wanted to. Try telling that to someone in the depths of poverty. Choice, on its own, is a massive privilege.

I feel so weighed down by my work sometimes that I tell people half-seriously that all I really want to do is to travel around the world, write emo poetry and live like a hobo. To be in that position to make that choice, is a privilege. It represents the absence of circumstances that will restrict my mobility. I don’t have to be in any rat race, climb any ladders or participate in any power struggles. I can choose to be poor, if I wanted to.

But there are billions of people who are unable to make that choice. They are held captive in circumstances not made by their own free will. They are born into political poverty — so poor that it is not even about the lack of opportunities, but they inherit a tremendous amount of negating circumstances they have to rise above, simply because of the geographical location of their birth.

Having the awareness that such a injustice exists, makes it almost impossible for me to give up my work, no matter how much I really want to. That I can still choose to give up, and knowing that billions of people can’t even make that choice, is a weight of that privilege of choice.

Giving up privilege does nothing to change the status quo. I want to stop feeling that weight, but escaping reality to be a hobo does not change reality. Perhaps the only way to make that weight more bearable, is to try to maximize that privilege I have, in exchange for the hope that one day the freedom to choose, will be more accessible to the rest of humanity.

Humanity can only fulfill her true potential if all of us can bear the privilege and weight of choice.