Choices are such an everyday thing that it's easy to forget how significant they are. The situation is made blurry by the fact that the majority of choices feel autonomic, and one might have to sail quite a ways before coming to a choice that rises above the waterline of habit and pragmatism. But we always do find ourselves facing difficult decisions. Sometimes the difficulty lies in the uncertainty of our knowledge, the limits of our reasoning power, or in the number of apparently equivalent options. And sometimes the difficulty cuts through something more substantial and meaningful to us.
But even an apparently meaningless choice can feel vividly real. It may not matter at all which shape pasta I cook for dinner, but I can reach a great, open space where I feel no powerful forces pushing me in one direction or the other, I'm not in a hurry and I can watch the process of decision taking place. I can feel a visceral feeling of uncompelled freedom as my hand wavers between the tagliatelle and the spaghetti. This feels very much like my choice: I am free to listen to every possible witness who might come forward to make a case for one or the other. One says that I should use the spaghetti because it is only half full and I could avoid having two opened packages. Another brings up the fact that a few weeks ago one of the children expressed mild delight in having tagliatelle. Others come forward but none have a strong case, and there I am, left to make this universe-shaping decision. The full impact of one choice or another in the course of eternal time may be hidden from me, but there can be no doubt in my mind that the well from which this choice is made goes very deep indeed.
The reality of our choices has a ripple effect, so to speak, in terms of implications. If my choices are real, then I am really responsible for their consequences. If my choices are real, then that deep well of "I"-ness from which they proceed must also contain something real. The realness in both cases is at least as real as my experience is vivid.
But there is something much more profound than a hazily grasped notion of something casually labeled "reality". A choice, to the extent it is real, proceeds all the way from Being, from deep in that mysterious well within us, from the realm of ideals, good, evil and consciousness, and it goes all the way out, into that shared, objective world of concrete, static objects. And not only does it connect the inner world to the outer world, it extends along the axis of time, participating in eternity. The pasta I cook tonight will always be the pasta I cooked tonight, and however obscure this detail, it will be eternally recorded in the annals of time, becoming a fixed and immutable aspect of my family's experience.
Given my first-hand experience of the reality of my choices, I can take a look at that ancient explanation for why there is evil: "because free will". That is, for will to be free we can't be denied the option of choosing evil instead of good. And if our will isn't free our being isn't real. There is no possibility of moral choice without free (and real) will. If a person is watching an eternal movie with no say in the matter, then nothing whatsoever could be said about their character, or even of their personality. There would be no 'there' there, with respect to the identity of an absolutely passive observer. A person who does not make real choices is not a person. This leads to the terrifying truth that good and evil are also real. That is, we make real choices which are or are not aligned in a real way with real goodness.
It's likely that a good many decisions, like my looming pasta decision, are morally neutral. But the outcome of a decision depends almost entirely on how it is made, and the small decisions are my practice for making the big decisions. Through small, low risk decisions I have the opportunity to explore that deep well from which all my decisions emerge. I might choose spaghetti over tagliatelle merely because I prefer it, ignoring what my family likes, and through numerous such decisions establish a pattern of basing decisions on a very questionable set of perspectives, empowering them over others. Or I might favor a pattern of decision making that adds up neutral factors like an accountant, lulling me to sleep with an increasingly automated and streamlined process, and end up thereby blinded to other perspectives, less able to perceive my own inward being.
This might be a lot of pressure to put on a decision about pasta, but the buck has to stop somewhere. If not pasta, when? When will I examine myself and dig down to the roots of my impulses and assert real ideals over autonomous preferences? When will I establish a solid allegiance to goodness, and train myself to choose that in every situation?
If I was completely on my own in this matter I would be quite lost. I would aspire to find good ideals, but my basis for measuring them would be fuzzy and the clarity of my perceptions would be limited to my own cognitive faculties, thereby leaving me more or less blind. If goodness existed only in that arid, individualistic, relative form, that would be as far as I could go. But goodness, being real, has a profoundly mysterious, yet real point of origin. Rather than grasping at straws in a vast field of amorphous uncertainty, I can turn in that direction.
Let's look at the reality of goodness just a little more deeply. First of all, goodness can't be objectified, it can only be understood from the perspective of being. It is part of our inward experience. It isn't a mere 'direction', we know this because it is absolutely not static or inert. It is no mere 'principle', and we know this because we cannot isolate goodness from that deep well of our own being.
It turns out that reality and personhood are inextricably intertwined. All of our experience points toward this: that realness and personhood are the same thing. That for there to be a 'there' there, there has to be someone there. All reality traces its origins back to being, and all being is personally experienced. Further, our experience of being is never multiple, it is always singular. It is irreducible. Personhood is irreducible and singular. Goodness is therefore no mere sign pointing toward something we will invent in the future. It always points, with a living finger, toward the better decision, toward the better circumstance, the better path, and toward something which--right now, not later--is better. It is not a pointer into a virtual realm where nebulous ideas explore themselves, it is clearly and blatantly a pointer beyond ourselves, far far beyond our awareness of our personal wells of being, far deeper than the ideal of our "heart's heart", toward a genuine and full Well. Real goodness fills us and guides us. It holds us like children, and gives us unexpected strength, carrying us through difficulty.
Yes, fortunately goodness has a real, personal source. Not just a direction I could turn to face a lonely road, but a Person toward Whom I can turn, and fully expect to be guided.
Disclaimer: the fact that I might turn in this direction in my negligent and half-hearted way should not lead anyone to use me as any kind of measure for the Grace that ensues from doing this properly. My very limited experience of turning 'somewhat genuinely' in the more or less right direction, while still greedily holding on to my passions, has blown me away but it is unlikely that the results could be construed as objectively impressive.
All of this is not to say that the answer is solely to turn to God in helplessness with my pasta-related decision. Unless I turn the whole well of my being over to the well Maker, the well will not be repaired. What is not assumed is not healed, after all. The pasta decision is a mere wart on the surface of the misshapen beast of my fallen will.
Through small things, like decisions about pasta, I hope to gradually become illumined by Grace such that God's light may shine on more fundamental aspects of my being. But surely I can reach deeper into my faculty of will and bring that to the altar, instead of a box of pasta.
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