More and more, I’m becoming aware that people don’t want to acknowledge that we are living the consequences of choices made. No matter how our choices are influenced by society, family, and circumstances, each of us makes a choice every time we speak and act.

During the Middle Passage, many slaves chose suicide over the the horrible conditions in which they found themselves. They were kidnapped, chained, and imprisoned within a ship, tightly packed with other captives, and forced to exist in their own waste, inhaling and swallowing their own and others’ filth and excrement. When allowed to come on deck for air, many jumped overboard and threw their children to certain death by drowning or sharks. This was a choice.

Many others chose to live as slaves. Their capture and trade as slaves was not a choice. However, within that circumstance, some chose to live. Others chose to die. Once in the foreign lands, some chose to fight, to escape, to kill their captors, to befriend and love their masters, or to simply survive to live another day. All kinds of choices were made within this era of non-choice.

Today, people choose to live on welfare for generations, although many say that there is no choice given the lack of education and opportunity. Many choose to forego birth control and have children for whom they cannot provide. Many have consensual sex with mates who have no intention of being parents. Many refuse to be educated because they don’t like school. All choices have consequences.

Some people want to start their own businesses, but are exhausted from working long hours at jobs that they hate. They bemoan the fact that they can’t fulfill their dreams because they don’t have time. They don’t have capital to put into a business. They don’t have money to rent an office that would attract better clients. They would like to relax more and enjoy life.

I remember growing up in a small house with six people. I shared a small room with two sisters. My brother had his own room. My parents shared the third room. We all used one bathroom. My cousins grew up as six girls in one bedroom sharing one bathroom with their parents. Now, children have to each have their own large rooms. Each family member has a cell phone, games, clothes, toys, expensive birthday parties and Christmas presents, and we’re all crying broke. We surround ourselves with necessities that used to be considered luxuries. Choices.

We don’t like arguments, conflict, and tension; but, we constantly find ourselves in such environments. Why can’t we walk away? Refuse to respond? Not react? Subdue our egos? Surrender our will and control? Choices.

Many of us are constantly pointing to “they” and refusing to acknowledge the role that we play in the things that “they” do. How many of us live in houses made of wood, buy wood bookcases and other furniture, but support the preservation of trees. We are against the loggers that destroy the forests that supply the wood for the buildings in which we live and work.

We use massive amounts of energy, but don’t like nuclear plants or the destruction of lands in developed countries by oil companies or wars in the Middle East. We want to always blame “them” when the horrible pictures come on TV, but “we” are “they” to someone. Choices.  Even if the choice is refusing to see.

We refuse to see that we have choices because we might have to take responsibility for choosing our lifestyles in exchange for someone else’s suffering. Many of us choose not to vote. We choose to remain ignorant about what is happening in our neighborhoods, our states, our countries, and our world. We choose to not be still and listen to ourselves. It’s easier to listen to someone tell us what to believe and to accept what they say as the truth.  It takes too much energy to become informed by reading and listening to a variety of sources and, then, forming our own conclusions and beliefs.

Life gets to be too much. Too many choices.  So we choose to check out.