It feels to me as though this is the only true choice we have.
You did not ask to be born. You did not choose your parents. You did not choose the circumstances into which you arrived. The only real choice, I think, lies in deciding how we will play the hand we have been dealt.
Not to mix metaphors, but I am reminded of Thomas Henry Huxley’s description of life as a game of chess.
He was searching for a metaphor for the silent player seated opposite us from the moment we are born:
“The chess-board is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”
It is important to remember that the hidden player is not malicious.
It simply follows rules that do not bend for our comfort. Its only demand is that we learn the board or accept the consequences of failing to do so.
We learn the moves because we must.
Perhaps that is where freedom begins: not in choosing the game, the board, or the pieces we were given, but in learning how to play them.