After having completed my driving suspension, I have finally been able to have the use of a car which I have made the most of in the last 3 days. The highlight most likely being able to buy an iPad :-)
But yesterday I was able to get out of the small town of Farmville and head over to a close town called Lynchburg. I did a little shopping and got a massage and then saw the movie The Adjustment Bureau. I had missed it whilst in the local cinema and was disappointed to have done so. So when I saw the opportunity to see it in Lynchburg, I decided to stay later to see it. Boy was I glad I did.
I have seen Battle LA, Lincoln Lawyer and Limitless since being here and the Adjustment Bureau was the best by far. Basically the sorry goes that Matt Damon is a young politician attempting to be voted into the USA Senate, however in doing so, he meets a lovely young lady who he wants to be with and she feels likewise. This is where the Adjustment Bureau steps in. The 'Chairman', otherwise known as God, has written the path that everyone is meant to take and these two being together is seen as a serious threat to that future plan. The Adjustment Bureau must attempt to keep the plan on track come hell or high water. Matt Damon and his damsel attempt to rewrite that plan.
So this brings us to the existential meaning in the movie which I guess most people would not have recognized as existential. That is that our futures are not written for us, no matter what we are dealt at birth or throughout our lives. We have the freedom to make our own choices and therefore decide our own future. This is one of the four pillars of existentialism according to the great Dr Irvin Yalom. The four pillars being death anxiety, freedom, isolation (or loneliness) and meaningless. I have previously spoken of meaningless after reading Viktor Frankl's book - Man's Search for Meaning.
With the idea of freedom comes the idea of personal responsibility. In making choices we must also take responsibility for those choices, both good and bad! I would say the greatest domain in which I see the giving up of our personal freedom, is in the writings of different religions. If something good happens, instead of recognizing the power of the human spirit they say praise be to God. Explain to me how this works when two teams pray before a game, one team wins and the other loses. Did one pray harder than the other or was one more on their best behavior than the other? Or is it that one team took the free choice to work harder, prepare better than the other team? Both teams have the freedom to work hard and prepare well.
On the other hand something goes poorly and its 'God works in mysterious ways, nobody is to
know his plans'. Is it possible that bad things sometimes happen, or as hard as it is to admit or say, someone somewhere made a mistake. Perhaps it was the case that a bunch of small mistakes lead to one big mistake. By giving up responsibility to a pre-written plan, we give up the responsibility for our role in an unfortunate circumstance. And going further with this, the avoidance of responsibility is also a strong defense mechanism against guilt. If we were to fully accept our responsibility for some of the bad things that happen in life, we would face inevitable guilt. One emotion that humans work tirelessly to a avoid.
If we take our sporting example again, what if one team did train one more night that week the other team and took the opportunity to scout the opposing team who did not do that extra work. The team who did the extra work, wins the game. All of a sudden the losing team tries to find a scape goat. The coach is pointing fingers at senior players and assistant coaches. What is known by some though is that the head coach 'knew' the other teams best player wasn't going to play due to injury and therefore took the choice not to train as hard that week nor spend the money to scout the opposing team. However if he had of, he would have found the opposing best player recovered from injury and trained on that last day. He had therefore not prepared well and saw the subsequent result in losing. But now he is doing everything he can to avoid the guilt by trying to find a scape goat.
Two things: firstly if he accepted responsibility it could be an amazing learning opportunity for him. he could say yes, that is my responsibility and I learnt about preparing properly for next time. I wont be caught out again. Secondly, when we do prepare properly, take responsibility for our own outcomes, we can have pride in the outcomes that follow. If we put in everything we can, make good choices and we get a good outcome we can say we did well! If we put in everything we can, make good choices and get a poor result, we will avoid the guilt which comes with knowing there was still something left in the tank or that we knew we made a bad choice. There is in fact something satisfying, even when we lose or something goes wrong, in knowing we did everything we could!
I'm sure we have all experienced that horrible, uncomfortable emotional feeling that you get when you know you haven't quite done everything you could have to avoid a bad outcome or to get a positive outcome, such as study harder for an exam! That uncomfortable feeling is called cognitive dissonance. The subconscious knows all and it knows when we have fallen short of our values. It let's us know through the cognitive dissonance (or guilt) which can be described as the space between the action we took and the action we should have taken in response to our own standards and value system.
I found an interesting article where a report asked several questions of the great tennis player, Ivan Lendl in a Qantas inflight magazine. Among other questions he was asked:
Q: "Most prized moment in your own sporting Career?"
IL: "Wining 8 gland slams and the Davis Cup".
Q: " Most humiliating moment?"
IL: "If you try your best there are no humiliating moments. If I am giving my best effort I am not embarrassed by the result".
I think these quotes perfect sum up the point I am trying to make.
So please, never believe you don't have the freedom to choose, whatever the situation might be. Your future is yet to be written and is in fact a clean canvass.
You have the power to set your own path and live a life based on the values that are most important to you.
D
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