Finally! My followup on life, the universe and Silda Spitzer's choices.
This is also posted at Two Women Blogging.
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| Photo credit: Photo by shadowfax the second on Flickr |
, although we've been known to discuss that too, but actual life, the universe and everything) when he told me that, for him, God is in choices. And I just loved the way he put that. (Darn that man for doing what people are always doing with my thoughts: summing them up much more succinctly than I can.)You see, I believe that when I am open to God (the universe, my higher power, the light within myself, the divine, call it what you will), I see reality more clearly. I see beyond the artificial limits and constraints my mind puts on situations, and I'm able to recognize and pursue alternative solutions. (See how much more pithily he did it?)
Or to use (as I'm prone to) a sci-fi movie metaphor for the way I see things: think of the climax of one of the greatest movies ever made: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
. Kirk and Khan are flying their spaceships around trying to kick the crap out of each other. Khan is using his super-intelligence to do some galactic scale ass whooping and Kirk (as usual) is in trouble. But in the end, Kirk is able to get the (literal) upper hand because he can think in three dimensions, while Khan (long trapped on the surface of Ceti Alpha Five) thinks in only two. It seems like a ridiculous premise that the super-intelligent Khan could forget, while flying a spaceship, that he could travel in any direction (even up and down!). However, it does allow God to be on the side of the Enterprise (so to speak, since my God is not on anyone's side), and a strangely lovable Shatner to gain the advantage over the sexy Ricardo Montalbon in battle. And after all, don't even the most super-intelligent of us sometimes forget we have other options because we're so used to doing things the way we have always done them?Of course, you might say that in the Star Trek scenario, any one of Khan's crew could have yelled, "Hey, Khan! Don't forget that these ships fly up and down!" And Khan would have taken that into account and made a different decision. Then Kirk would have died a more respectable death than the way he was eventually (pointlessly) written out. (Oh, don't get me started on Kirk's demise in that Next Generation crossover movie! Sigh!) But in real life, having someone tell me that I have the option to make a choice doesn't actually make that choice any more real or available to me.
Why? Because we each live in our own Matrix of beliefs and assumptions. (Yes, I am pretty sure I have no way of explaining my spiritual vision of the universe without resorting to science or sci-fi metaphors.) If one of you all tells me, while I'm still living in the virtual reality world of the Matrix, "Hey, stand up on your own legs and breathe," I'll mutter, "I am, dumbass!" Because I don't know I'm in a bubble; as far as I know, I am on my own feet, breathing. It's that connection to God (or inner knowledge or call-it-what-you-will) that lets me start to see beyond the constraints I've placed around myself.
I'm on a journey -- toward growth, toward truth, toward a sustained connection with that God of mine -- and at every step, every fork in the road, every moment, every decision, I am doing the best I can with the knowledge and resources (physical, spiritual and emotional) I have available to me at that particular moment. I may look back and think, "If I knew then what I know now..." or "I should have...," but the truth is that I didn't know those things then or have the strength or see those choices from where I was at that moment. I could only have done something different if I were a different person, in a different place, than who I was and where I was. So every choice I make, odd as it sounds, is the best choice for me at the moment I'm making it.
And bringing this back around to Silda Spitzer, who started my thoughts in this direction: Silda Spitzer is a real-live grown-up, adult, big-girl-panties-wearing woman. If the decision to leave was truly available to her and she made the decision to stay, I may not know the reasons or may not have made the same decision myself, but I have to respect her decision.
If her choices were constrained by where she has been in this life and by who she is now, if she was unable to stand up to pressure or unable to see her needs as separate from Eliot Spitzer's or unable to see the difference between what she wants and what she is supposed to do, then that's where she is on her particular journey and I have to accept and respect that. No one can tell her what the Matrix is, and no one can force a red pill down her throat. If she was constrained by an inability to see other options as valid, maybe going up on a stage in front of the whole world by her husband's side is her way of taking the red pill she needs to escape into the real world.
So, the way I see it, the right thing for Silda Spitzer (or anyone else) to do is the thing she, as a unique individual, wants to do, and what she, as a unique individual, is capable of doing within the constraints she lives with at that particular moment. And the best thing I can do right now, as a woman, as a feminist, as a human, as the unique person I am at this moment, is offer my support and respect for the journey she is on.
Of course, I know that if you have a different set of beliefs about the world than I do, you certainly won't agree with those the last three paragraphs. But agree or not, what I really want to know is, how do you all see the world? Free will? People's choices? If you post on your own blog, let me know. (And feel free to use sci-fi metaphors so I can understand it.)
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