CAN I DO WHAT I LIKE?

CAN I DO WHAT I LIKE?

Human beings are faced with numerous uncertainties. We are faced with certain urgent cases of which conclusions must immediately be made for the continuation of life struggle. Such urgent cases, on the one hand, may either concern one’s relationship with fellow rational beings (i.e persons –human and divine alike); and on the other hand, may either concern one’s relationship with other living beings (animals and plants) or with non-living entities (naturally situated and man-made). After such conclusions have been made, we are taken to be men of ourselves.

Yet, if any complication arises from such a decision, we are said to be master-minders of our problems. Thus, the effects and the consequences of the decisions are solely to be reckoned with us. We choose what we want and discard what we do not want. In the world of affection, we see ourselves being attractive to certain persons and are repulsive to certain others. We observe ourselves being attracted to some people and yet to some others, we abhor. We tend to be inclined to some people; to some others, we loathe.

In the state of love and hate, we observe ourselves in a position to approach whom we want and ignore those we don’t want. If we are agreed to embark on an expedition of disclosing our minds to such persons, it may, on the one consideration,  go with it a certain feeling of despair, and on another consideration, may go with a strong conviction, for one may feel that the other also cherishes him or her. This approach if successful does not affect only one’s life, but also the life of the others who are within the pyramid of one’s love. Whatever we choose in life affects others. This is where the feeling of anguish creeps in.

Continually, on another sphere, are what we do in life already fashioned? That is, are we made a priori to go through a particular pathway in life? Are our choices already made by some other person and then we only conform our wills and actions towards the choice? Let us consider this example; a child was asked what he wanted to be in the future when he must have become an adult, he exclaims: I want to be a medical doctor. Is it that that is what life has got for him prior to his physical existence or is he really the originator of such aspiration? Consequently, such tensions arise: Is my life pre-destined or my future already determined? All these are the confrontations which life mounts before us.

Furthermore, everybody is an individual person and as such possesses a subjective life for an objective reality. What a trembling condition!! He remains responsible for his actions and choices. What an anxiety!! Parallel to this, the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Satre in a lecture in 1946 titled Existentialism is a Humanism avers that when we talk about the responsibility of man, we do not mean that man “is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men.” That is, in the choices we do make in life, they do not just affect only the individual but the entire humanity. Man chooses not just for himself but for entire men. Thus, we need to ask ourselves: am I really the man whose actions serve as consequences for matters of regulation to all men? There is dignity in choice making.

Nevertheless, amidst this dignity and prior to the choice making, there is the presence of anguish (angst), just as the existentialist philosophers would always write. This is what the Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard regarded as the ‘anguish of Abraham’, which Abram experienced at the command to sacrifice his own son. Anguish here implies in simpler terms that in life when an individual is confronted with decision-making, he/she cannot but choose between different options -to do or not to do, to act or not to act; and prior to the execution of the choice, there is an intense feeling of fear. This hinges on the rationale that the individual is aware that his choice will not just affect only himself , but also the rest of mankind. Thus, he has the obligation to be responsible in his choice. Upon this anguish, man finds himself in despair due to the fear whether what he is laboring for will actually see the light of the day. There exists the probability whether what one thinks and does will actually happen as one proposes.

Considering all these dusts surrounding decision making, some people are inclined to quietism and then recline back to such statements as ‘it is not my fault; it is my nature’, ‘I have already been determined to be poor’ or to put in Igbo dialect, ‘Omewere ma Chi ekweghi...’ The spirit to dare seems to have been lost. There is therefore a pressing need to recover such a spirit. Quietism or to render in a psychological terminology, schizo-typal personality trait is not an optimistic way of meeting life, but a timid way.

As a theologian, am I free to do whatever I want or to say whatever I deem fit concerning God and the Church? As a philosopher, am I free to follow any pattern of logic in my way of presenting facts and arguments? Some situations present serious challenges to us. One last thing- if you find yourself between the devouring devil and the deep blue sea, what will you do? You will certainly not tell me that you will remain undisturbed in that position.

Ezekoka Peter Onyekachi, CCE