Becoming conscious of life choices means start of whole new struggle

By David McElroy · April 24, 2015

If you drop a leaf into a moving creek, the leaf will be carried from place to place downstream by the water. The leaf has no will of its own and no input about where it goes or what happens to it.

It’s pure chance about which leaves will be crushed or destroyed quickly and which might make it for hundreds of miles before breaking apart.

Life is the same way for most people.

They’re dropped into the stream of life and have no real thoughts of their own about where they’re going or what they’re doing. They simply act as others around them act, waiting for fate to carry them to a destiny and then to death.

It’s a very easy and peaceful way to live, but it’s meaningless and random. Becoming self-aware enough to know that you don’t have to be a passive leaf in the stream of life is a struggle, but even getting to that point makes your life far more difficult, because it’s the beginning of something much harder.

If you become aware that you don’t have to gently float to whatever fate random chance has in store for you, you’re forced to either panic from that realization or else start fighting to change your course.

The simple realization that you have choices doesn’t necessarily give you understanding of what the choices are or what your life means. You’ve just awakened enough to know how desperate your situation is and then you have to start figuring out how the entire ecosystem of the stream works at the same time you also try to teach yourself to think and to act.

It’s confusing and difficult. Most of us who become self-aware enough to try to break free from the random life that others have never make it past this stage.

I feel like a leaf in the stream who has learned enough to scream that there’s more to life than floating randomly in the same direction as everyone else. I’ve learned that much of popular culture is poisonous to my mind and that it functions like a numbing drug that keeps me from becoming more self-aware and learning more about what I need to be.

So I’ve learned not to watch television. I’ve learned to question things that my culture gives me through the various forms of media which I have trouble avoiding. I’ve learned to look more deeply than just the surface layer of what seems so interesting to almost everybody else.

But I’m very aware that what I’m learning makes life more difficult. I’m not under the illusion that understanding some of the truth means my struggles are over. I have to work harder than ever to notice connections between the bits and pieces of truth I’ve discovered.

One of the hardest parts of this is learning humility. I’ve found some truth about life that’s very important to me, but I’ve had to become painfully aware that I could still be wrong — just as wrong as I was when I believed any number of other things that I’ve now discarded.

That means I don’t have the luxury of crying, “Wake up!” to others, as I frequently see some people do. It seems as though some people discover something true and then become frustrated when others don’t immediately see things their way. I’ve gone through periods when I was arrogant enough to believe that I had The Truth — about various things — and if others would simply listen to me, they, too, would become as enlightened as I was.

Now, I realize how ignorant I still am. And I realize that my beliefs and understanding will continue to change — about many things.

I can’t make others wake up, because people discover truth and wisdom only when they’re ready to find it — if they ever find it at all. What’s more, I’m just a struggling leaf that’s still floating in the stream. I might have come to the conclusion that life shouldn’t be this way. I might have seen some insights that are very important to me. But I still have so much to learn.

I can share my experience with others — letting them learn from my mistakes — but I’m not ready to be a teacher. The best I can do is offer my life as a collection of errors to avoid along the way.

The easiest and most peaceful way to live is to remain completely unaware of who you are and what your possibilities are. That’s what most people do. They follow their friends and family and culture, and they live a life in the moment, floating passively to the end of existence with no real understanding that life can be any other way.

I suspect it’s just as easy on the other end of the journey — for those who have become enlightened enough to understand the choices and to have internalized the meaning of life, for those who have learned to love completely and live in peace.

The hardest place to live is in the middle — that place of being awake to the struggle and to the notion that life can be something different. At that stage, you’re fighting to step out of the stream that’s carrying everyone else. You’re fighting your own habits. You’re fighting the beliefs you’ve accepted from everybody else — about yourself and the value of life, material things and love.

You’re confused because you’ve uncovered enough to know what you’ve believed in the past is wrong, but you haven’t figured out enough to change where you’re going or understand enough of the truth to trust love or to know who else to trust.

I have little to say to those who are still floating in the mainstream culture and are unaware that there’s more to life. The few among them who will change — as I did and as you might have — come to that point when they’re ready, not because I ask them to.

I also have nothing to say to those who are enlightened enough to have arrived on the other side of the struggle — those who have emulated Jesus so well that their hearts are filled with love instead of hate. They’re so far ahead of me that I have little in common with them yet.

It’s those of us struggling in the middle who I think about.

The worst thing we can do is get tired of the struggle and close our eyes to the truth we’ve found — to go back to living as other people’s values dictate.

I don’t like the struggle of this middle ground. It was a lot easier when I saw things as others did and defined success a lot more as they do. But I think there’s something worth the struggle waiting for us at the other end of the journey.

There’s love and understanding and peace. And those will make the struggle worthwhile.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

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The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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