Choice - a privilege

Friday 20th November, 2020

I am still reading R.S. Thomas's poems, savouring them, allowing them to penetrate my psyche and feed my soul and stimulate my numinosity. His poem 'The Unvanquished' struck me as powerful and apposite:

" And courage shall give way

to despair and despair

to suffering, and suffering

shall end in death. But you

who are not free to choose

what you suffer can choose

your response....."

It is that choice which defines us. The suffering is a fact, despair is a frequent experience but it is the choice which matters. Do people just drift in to situations, in to reactions, in to a zombie state without awareness or sensitivity or even caring? Even not choosing is a choice, even leaving it to fate, to circumstance, to forces over which we claim to have no control is our responsibility. Sadly many of us hide and run and duck. I did so with alcohol. Many do so with being over busy or ever with noise or self deception or distractions of all sorts. I do not judge, I do not condemn but I do wish it otherwise.

I am trying to be conscious of life, of all I say, do, think and believe.

Today I made myself take a long walk. I deliberately went the way which leads to discarded and unwanted and wasted apples and I took some. I have deliberately tried, mainly successfully, to stop shouting at the news. The Home Secretary backed by the Prime Minister stays in office yet the independent man who lead the Inquiry in to the allegations of bullying by her has resigned. I am full of opinion even rage over it. I have seen items of news on the devastation caused by natural forces in various countries, including the Philippines and Central America, and I have wanted to curse and blame and question God. I have had emails from friends as to new illnesses and progress in cancers in spite of attempts to heal them and have wanted to despair.

All these things and more are happening, as are good and generous things, and I have a choice. The choice is to hope or not to hope. The choice is to pray or not to pray. The choice is to allow negativity in to my soul or not.

Thomas ends his poem having mentioned proud farmers and suffering people's and writes: "...When they died, it

was bravely, close up under the rain-hammered

rafters, never complaining."

The way one dies reflects the way one lives. And the way one lives is the way one chooses to live. What a privilege to have that choice, surely not to be wasted or ignored.