Choice

Every life has a purpose -whether you think so or not. We are all here to live a series of events and challenges. We are all here to grow and develop into who we are. There is nothing easy about it. But it was never supposed to be easy. In fact you can be sure that if the process of your life is feeling easy it is either because you have successfully avoided your life or that you have successfully reached nirvana/oneness/enlightenment/heaven.

But the important facts are these: you will live this purpose through a series of choices you will make and you are not alone in this process.

It is obvious. We fall out of another human being. We would not survive without the benevolence of parents and family. We seek love and acceptance just as we seek food and shelter. We are a social beast.

As we progress through the days we find that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. A society can accomplish so much more than an individual. A group of people working together is capable of more than one person working alone.

Moreover, we discover and eventually come to accept, that there is very little in our lives that does not come from other people. Whatever you have as possessions, almost all came from the work of others.

Your knowledge was a gift from parents and teachers as well as books and their authors.

Your food and your home were likely the work of others. And even if your grew your food and built your home someone else gave you the seed, built the tillers and rakes you use, piped the water to your home for your irrigation, cut down the trees for the lumber, fabricated the nails and shingles and created the electricity you used to build. Most of what we have and use came from others.

Even if we are creative and are doing things no one else has done before, thinking things no one has thought before, creating things no one has created before, these are only possible due to the accomplishments of the past. Even if you have elite intellect and are creating new ideas in the world, Newton said it best, "If I have seen a little farther than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."

Nothing comes to us except through others.

The great accomplishments of your life will require the compassionate interaction with other people. Coming to knowing your purpose will require the insight of others. Pursuing your purpose will require the cooperation of others. Fulfilling your purpose will require the contribution of others.

In this great process, we will need others and their abilities.

We cannot do it alone.

This need of others, exacerbated by the extensive interdependency of the society we have created, is the seed of all the power we will experience in our lives.

I will write more on this later, for this is the heart and soul of what I have to offer.

But for today we must focus on the first of the facts. Life is a series of choices.

You will live your life in increments. Whether you see these as steps, stages, phases, minutes moments or periods, each increment is created and finished by a choice you will make along the way.

The increments of a life lived are the choices of that life. Infinite in number as well as in effect, the choices we make are how we actually live.

Life is choice. The process of life is to make choices and then deal with the outcome by making more choices. Each choice being a step further. Not always a s step toward our goal. Often a step away from our goal. Not all choices are for our betterment. Some hurt badly. But even those choices that turn out to be detrimental or even painful, ultimately bring us closer to our purpose because life is not linear. It is more than our four dimensional existence. Growth comes in many directions. Each choice is a contribution to the net outcome.

The increment of life is choice.

When you combine our two truths - we live our lives through a series of choices and those choices are made in the presence of, and in conjunction with, others - we give birth to power.

Affecting choice is the purpose of power.

Power is the ability to use another's need to fulfill their purpose to cause them to make choices that benefit us. Power is using the increment of life to our benefit without regard to the benefit of the one making the choice.

The target of power is always choice. Power is about choice. Controling choice, influencing choice or seducing choice. Power is about impacting the choices others make. Power uses others choice to fulfil our purpose.

This is the relationship between power and choice.