On life and time

One topic that has fascinated me lately is that of free will.

I guess from pre historic time, humans have tried to explore this topic. Humans are curious and the ultimate curiosity is to understand why we exist. This question has taken humans to different paths of life and from this very question there are various offshoots into spirituality, religion and science. Infact, to think of it, if there is any strong link between science and religion/spirituality then it is the curiosity to know why we exist.

Now, while there is no definitive answer for our existence, the very next question, while we exist, is to know whether we exist of our own accord. This brings us to freewill.

Essentially, we want to know, whether we can live life completely on our own and as we want to ? I believe this question cannot be answered definitively. But we can have our own versions.

My own search has taken me to some interesting places and I will share some links at the end of this article. But what I intend to write here is what I make of this topic, of course being fully aware that some of my thoughts could be, knowingly or unknowingly, influenced by the content I have consumed.

I guess, there are some factors which drive the basic human quest to know both, the beginning and the end. Since time unknown, humans have tried to find the source of our existence. We call that source by many names – god, cosmos, big bang, etc but the quest is never ending. Likewise we want to know what happens after we die – do we just cease to exist or we reach a higher plane (heaven, hell ?) or are we reborn.

And while we are in the middle of our source and destination, do we live life at our own accord? Can we really decide what we want to do and take the reins in our hand ? Free will can then be argued at both macro and micro levels. At a micro level, free will is about the overall theme of our life – the family we have, the careers we have, the good and bad we experience, the ups and downs of life, the people we meet, and finally the way we enter the final phase. At a micro level, free will is about the decisions we make, the way we live our days, the thoughts we have, the things we do as we go about in life.

In my personal opinion, I believe we do live a somewhat pre-destined life. In fact, I am saying “somewhat” because of both, my limited understanding of this topic and fear to accept that life is fully predetermined. I am already finding it hard to bring my thoughts together, but I will try my best.

To start with, our life is shaped by many factors which are completely out of our hands. The family that we are born in, the innate nature we are born with, the early years that shape our personality, the chances we take in life and their outcome etc are some examples. If we take a pause and think about the things that we are drawn to in life, it is unexplainable why we are drawn to those things and the impact thereof they have on our life. We all take some or the other chance in life but only few get success and continue while others move on to something else. Take sports for example. There are thousands who are drawn to a sport and try to excel, but only a handful have that deep drive to excel. Further only a few find the right coach, colleagues, support system, luck etc in life.

At a micro level, I have observed that each action that we take is always preceded by a thought. Sometimes this thought is not even noticed by us, but it is by our subconscious. Let’s say you decide to do some work. What made you decide ? Obviously there was some thought that popped in your head and you took action. But what preceded that thought ? Why did you have that thought ? There is no answer to this question.

In fact, those who have tried some form of meditation can tell you how absolutely random the thought factory in our head is, and the completely unpredictable way in which thoughts pop up. It is impossible to stop thoughts. That is why meditation is not about stopping thoughts (that is not possible), it is about observing thoughts, being ok with them and knowing the nature of this randomness. Now going back to the above paragraph, it is not possible to know where a thought came from. The only aspect we can recognise is that there was a thought and we took an action on it. In fact, if we did not act on it then that too was a thought telling us not to act. It is so fascinating if you start observing.

And hence, it is very difficult to say that we are indeed masters of our destiny. Of course we deserve all the acknowledgement for our courage, persistence, patience, intelligence but to say that these aspects were conjured by us on our own is to believe we are super humans. May be we are, may be not.

Here is some content on this topic that you might find interesting (there is a lot more, but I do not want to post it all here). In fact, you might ask this to ChatGPT and have some very interesting arguments with it.