I’ll beat the almost dead horse- I wanna talk about our feelings this holiday pandemic. Though I don’t plan on talking very much about the holidays.
There’s been no shortage of advisory, advice-laden posts on the Integra blog, and seeing as we aim to provide as many educational resources as possible to underserved communities, the content is just how we like it! Yet one thing we might be missing is something more community-driven, more sentimental, especially when it comes to our collective mental states. That’s code for one of the editors would like to rant about their thoughts and make it passably palatable, but I’ll allow it!
One question or stream of thought I hear brought up in conversations A LOT is a sort of regretful pondering:
Who would I be if it weren’t for two years of lockdown, social isolation, and general unrest? What experiences were stolen from me?
What has the pandemic done to who I am?
It’s a loaded question. One with answers that can leave you satisfied with any progress or soul searching you might have achieved, or deeply grieving the person you believe you could have been. It may arguably hit hardest with teenagers, who are already living through a quick period of change and growth by normal standards. Three years of middle school and four of high school, then the real world starts with jobs and/or post-secondary education. Each year can differ wildly from the rest with many experimental, coming-of-age milestones marking the passage of time. But who do we become if these milestones and experiences never reach us at all? If they sit untouched gathering dust in some alternate universe while we stay home eating very many pomegranates waiting for Netflix to churn out something new, or grow up too quick as front-line workers and members failed by some crisis government legislature?
I find a bit of philosophy is a useful tool in times when you swirl yourself too fast down this fascinating toilet drain of existential pondering and find you aren’t happy with the answers coming to you. What I believe and hope you take away from this, should you so choose, is that entertaining this question is only useful to a degree before it gets to affect your mental health and that ultimately, religious or spiritual opinions aside, you are at the only place in your life you could ever be at this time. So essentially don’t think mean thoughts too hard or second guess your life too much. The support for my resulting thoughts stems from determinism and how I consequently believe regrets, or “what if” statements are underrated.
I’m taking philosophy this year. My class had a Free Will Vs. Determinism debate where I defended the existence of determinism. It so happened that my personal views suited the position I had to take. First, let’s get into some definitions.
Determinism:
The philosophic theory that all events are “fated”, out of your decisive control; all events that occur happen because of other existing causes. So your decision to apply to medical school wasn’t quite your free and informed decision, instead, it was the product of your environment and the history of your environment. It is the theory of cause and effect.
Free Will:
The philosophic theory that you have actual, big picture control over your existence through choices you make of your own sound mind. This philosophy suits the generalization we often hear about humans, that we are unpredictable and random- the most complex machinery of all living things. Our unpredictability is what is supposed to debunk determinism, because how then can things be pre-determined if our actions cannot conceivably be predicted?
My Gist:
I don’t believe the course of our lives is entirely up in the air, subject to chaos and entropy (a measured and scientific amount of randomness and disorder). I don’t believe there are versions of ourselves we are required to be at certain points in time that we have to reach. I guess I don’t fully and honestly believe in free will. But I’m not a disbeliever in a scary way, don’t worry, I like free will and act on it and I’ll explain in a bit.
You can be in Gr 11 without ever having gone to a party, in first-year uni without having had a first kiss, or having just missed the national qualifying prerequisites for your competitive sport. You haven’t missed out on anything really, because it didn’t happen for you point-blank. When you imagined yourself living out these experiences, with this pandemic and for a billion other reasons, you were off doing something else. Something that probably sounds, looks, and smells a lot less glamorous and life-affirming. But you were awake and alive the whole time. You were doing what you could do. Virtual pig dissections for biology (it’s really underwhelming), walking your dog, playing Rocket League, bagging grocery items, maybe even sleeping. I believe that who we are at any given moment, is the only person we can be, and consequently, we take the only actions we could ever take in the particular situation we’re in. Emma can only do what Emma would do. The actions you take are all your own, are all built off your previous actions and experiences. Your unforgivable you-ness is the tough pill to swallow here. So where you cannot indulge in “what ifs”, because you can’t act any way except one and thus can never change your past actions, you can have shame and disappointment in what you were “destined” to do.
Emma can only do what Emma would do, but maybe Emma is disappointed with how a recent version of herself handled a situation. Emma wants to work on her reactions for future situations.
Here I re-state: thinking too hard about who you could have been is nothing but a can of worms. You did all you could have done, my use of the word “could” does not necessarily mean you put in a lot of effort or intent into your choices, just that your self was unable to act in a different way. Think instead about your present and your future. Make S.M.A.R.T. goals, work on improving a quality or flaw of yours, refine a hobby, give yourself a tough honest talk, or indulge in something that makes you happy.
When you have the overarching belief that you are unalterably you, until of course a horrible car accident smushes half your brain and you effectively become another version of yourself, you can be at peace with your place in life, even if you had higher hopes for this place. This does mean conceding that free will isn’t all that real, but that doesn’t mean we have to abandon the concept of free will. In fact, it’s quite impossible. You and I and the whole population make choices every single day, think about those choices, stand by them, or resent them. In our plane of reality, society functions best when we all willingly follow rules and laws and periodically engage in some constructive mischief. It’s then imperative we continue to “make choices” and humour free will. It’s what will keep us feeling sane and in control, while society continues on as best it can. For if we were all to succumb to the “fate” of determinism and stop making decisions we believe will have consequences, then we will have a veritable Purge situation on our hands. Our mental health, as well as general safety problems, will have only just begun.
Happy thoughts and happy holidays!
Written by: Emma M
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