Pro-Choice

Daily Meditation #399–3/31/2023

Each day we are faced with many, many choices.

Café latte or Americano?
Packing a lunch or ordering McDonald’s?
Holding our tongue or making the passive aggressive comment?
Buying the shoes or saving a buck?

In most cases, we make a choice based on our immediate and perceived best interest. You’re biologically hungry, ideally want something tasty, so you take the free donut at work.

May not be in your actual best interest, but immediately it is perceived that way.

However, there are situations where we nearly always make the wrong choice:

How we feel about others’ words and actions towards us.

We have complete control over our perception. Believe it or not, we are not animals, nearly incapable of sheathing our claws at a perceived threat.

In the exact moment your coworker calls you “Completely incompetent” under their breath you may spurt back “Eff you, dude,” but it’s the corrosive, acidic effect of the words ricocheting around between our ears that causes the most damage.

We will lay in bed, fists and jaw clenched, staring out into the blackness of our room, mind racing with comebacks and fury, obsessing over that split second moment.

But why on Earth would we choose this?
Why, when we have the ability to choose our perceptions, what purpose is served by us allowing their opinions (founded or not!) to possess us?
How is it in our best interests to choose anger, hate, jealousy, or otherwise?

We are adults (most of us, I’d assume) and have full control of our minds and perceptions of our world. So, let’s act like it.

When others lash out at us, we don’t have to perceive it as anything at all.
Just as when our spouse reaches out to grab our hand as we’re on a walk, we can equally choose to perceive it as a sign of their affection and love for us.

We must endeavor to make sure we are choosing our perceptions in a manner that serves us positively — and I don’t mean that in the Machiavellian or manipulative sense, either.

So, what has someone called you or told you recently that you are clinging onto, hurting, aching, and allowing their acid to dissolve you?

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These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”