Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

The Right to Choose

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The Right to Choose

A wise man was once asked by his relatives to share some valuable words. The wise man thought for a while and said, “It is important to speak and to listen as these both actions are also a sort of virtue. So, listen while I speak and listen carefully.” Saying so he invited his relatives to relax in front of him and pay attention to his words. “Listen! I pray that we never become the victim of a sole lie, I seek refuge from the virtue that is the only virtue and does not have any other alternative and at the same time from the sin that has no other substitute. I believe that there should always be options for the people so that they are able to choose the best for themselves,” he kept on saying while his relatives were all ears.

If I am happy and contended with my lie, who are you to impose your truth on me? Nobody should have the right to make decisions and start accepting and rejecting on my behalf. Listen! Those, who try to be hurdle between men and their desires, would have the worst life ever. Who could claim what the truth really is and what lie really means? What is good forever and what is bad everlastingly. It is advisable to like for others what you like for your own self but never make your like an order for others. Your like must resemble a wish and must never enter the limits of a decision. If decisions are imposed on the people, they will never remain loyal to themselves and neither to others and to the societies where they live. How could a person value a society where none of his wishes is valued? Where he has to spend his life by following the orders of others? No one would like to follow those rules and regulations willingly, which are formed without his involvement and are forcefully implemented on him. He would definitely question the authority of those who impose their decisions on others. He would ask who has given them the right to do so. No one among us has been sent from the sky and all of us have the same relation with the time and space. It is not right if some of the people start considering themselves superior to others as all belong to the same earth and live through the same time.

Today’s human beings have degraded themselves and the ones, who mock the inferiority of others and consider themselves exalted, have further disgraced them. Such people have, as a matter of fact, gone astray but they believe that they are on the right path. Following that path they have to face the hatred and curse of others; they have to live through the abhorrence of their fellow beings. And, how can a person consider himself better and on the right path if his fellow beings detest him and tolerate him because of some compulsion? How can a person be so much absurd and stupid?

If a person is not able to choose an option from amongst different choices, he, in fact, does not exist. And, if he is free but he has sold his right of decision to someone else, it means he has lost himself willingly. While, he has lost himself, he does not have the right to live life with all its beauties. He, actually, resembles a nonliving being, that is lying uselessly on the face of earth without contributing anything positive to it.

The authoritative few have imposed such systems on other human beings that have taken their rights of decision from them. They themselves have right to choose as they have accumulated most of the wealth and enjoy the luxuries of life while others’ decisions are dictated to them by their social, political and economic circumstances. Though today most of the societies chant the slogans of democracy, they have failed to implement it in true sense. Democracy, at least ideally, stands for the freedom of thought, expression and decision, but today’s men living in democratic societies are deprived of their choices. They are enslaved in the invisible chains of deterministic systems.

As put by Lauren Oliver, “They couldn’t have known that even this was a lie—that we never really choose, not entirely. We are always being pushed and squeezed down one road or another. We have no choice but to step forward, and then step forward again, and then step forward again; suddenly we find ourselves on a road we haven’t chosen at all”.

Most of the people are only free to choose between the bad and worse. They either have to suffer extreme poverty or opt for a criminal life. They, on one hand, have the option to live a pathetic life or welcome the untimely death. Is it really democratic? Is it really a choice, wherein you are given a limited set of options to choose from when none of the choices is better than the other? On the other hand people are not encouraged to choose; they are taught to compromise with what they have. Through the so-called educational institutions they are conditioned to live a life they are dictated to live. Parents, teachers and guides all have failed to teach the children and the students the capability to choose and to choose rightly. As quoted beautifully by David Foster Wallace, “But someone sometime let you forget how to choose, and what. Someone let your peoples forget it was the only thing of importance, choosing. . . How to choose any but a child's greedy choices if there is no loving-filled father to guide, inform, teach the person how to choose? How is there freedom to choose if one does not learn how to choose?” 

Dilawar Sherzai is the permanent writer of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan. He can be reached at Outlookafghanistan@gmail.com

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