Evan Renaerts

Freedom & Choice

December 3, 2007

Heavy rains rattle the eaves and window panes, washing away the snow from the weekend. Vancouver’s streets and sidewalks are a slushy mess with storm drains overflowing; it seems that winter has arrived.

I was listening to one of my teachers talk about choice. He had been asked if at a certain level of awakening we no longer needed to worry about choice because we would be guided by divine intelligence.

The teacher replied that the opposite was true; that the more awake we become the more accountable we are for our choices – and we are always choosing. To describe the nature of choice in our lives he said, it’s like driving a car, you are always making tiny adjustments to the steering wheel, you don’t even notice that you’re doing this, but if you didn’t you would land in the ditch.

In the “free” world we love our freedom: free speech, free press, freedom to bear arms; we have court cases about whose freedom is the most important freedom. What we pay far less attention to is the consequences of our freedom – who goes without so that we can have; whose voice is silenced so that ours can be heard and who has to die so that we can feel safe?

Part of the difficulty in all of this is the ever-present dilemma of complexity and unintended consequences. From the perspective of the singular “I” it can make complete sense that I should have the freedom to say whatever I believe is true and I should certainly be free to defend myself from aggressors.

Now extend that same freedom to all the billions on the planet, to all the different cultural perspectives and all the different interpretations of what is true. Suddenly the likelihood of misunderstanding and tragedy has exploded into possibility. The great complexity of human life on earth (not even taking into consideration all of the other life forms) cannot be addressed through simple codes and beliefs.

One of the points that my teacher made was that we are accountable for our choices whether we wish to be or believe we are. The greater our awareness of how our choices affect others, the greater our level of accountability. As frustrating as it is for the straight ahead action types we humans need to be constantly talking to each other; putting our best efforts into learning about each other and examining the choices we make.

Freedom of choice is deemed the greatest gift of humanity and like all great gifts it comes with a great responsibility. We all have our hands on the steering wheel: in our own lives, in the life of our communities, and in the life of our species on this planet.

We are the wise leaders we have been waiting for. There are no extras waiting in the wings. It’s up to us to make the best choices we are capable of making and to continue growing our own awareness while doing this.

Evan Renaerts
604 314 0835
evan@evanrenaerts.com