Choosing The Impossible
In February of 2012, I received a call from the University of Colorado Distinguished Speakers Board asking if I wanted to debate Dr. Sam Harris, a terminally bad career move that I quickly declined, and so he gave a lecture instead. Dr. Harris is a philosopher, neuroscientist, and incredibly dispassionate debater—and despite our intelligence gap that had me at a considerable disadvantage, it was the dispassionate part that led me to bail. Harris believes that free will is an illusion—that we are merely a collection of our DNA and every life experience we have been aggregating, leading us to every decision or action we have ever made and ever will make. If you had Jeffrey Dahmer’s DNA and life experience, Harris would claim, you too would be a serial killer. I tremendously believe, to my core, that we have a strong say in our destiny, and I would fervently defend this belief. But herein lies the problem.
Touch your finger to your nose. Did you do it? Did you ignore? Either way, Harris would say you didn’t choose that action or inaction. It was chosen for you. I hate this argument—most do—but you likely aren’t going to disprove it to him. Nor would me blaring it out on stage. I’ve spent too many hours to count wondering how I could do just that. Even these musing, of course, could just be dictated by my DNA + experiences equation. I have experiences, of course, that I believe flow in the direction of free will. Perhaps the most compelling involves, and I am not exaggerating in the slightest, the night as an adolescent in middle school when I decided it would behoove me to change my personality from introvert to extrovert (“shy” to “outgoing” would have been the words I thought in at the time). I quite literally woke up the next morning an extrovert—and have been ever since. But again, that isn’t proof.
Is there proof? This morning, I read the following passage.
“If you do not consider yourself
a testament to the impossible
let me help you understand:
you are an assortment of atoms,
carving out its very own fate
with your stardust powered hands.”
― Nikita Gill
Carving out my own fate—again, that is my most core of beliefs. That we can choose to be our very own makers of music and dreamers of dreams. Tell me I can’t do something and there is nothing more motivating. I’ve blogged about that numerous times; one example is here. Which is where things get interesting. What if we are our very own proof? Not from our debates, or words, but in our our testament to the impossible.
I would suggest to you that any decision within the laws of physics is possible for you to make, and within that statement is your proof. You are bound by almost nothing.
Carve out your fate. Starting right now.
In a bad relationship? End it. Want to start running? Do it. Travel the world. Find a way. That challenge to yourself, the thing you most want to do but haven’t because your genetics and experience have kept you afraid from doing them—that itself is the proof. Do it. Do not let your fear and vulnerabilities prevent you from it, and you have affirmed your free will.
Like many of my blogs, I lack the words to end with precisely what I am trying to say, so I will borrow from someone else. Anne Frank, as most of you know, was a Jewish child who spent most of her life either hiding from the Nazis or imprisoned in concentration camps. She, and her sister, died in one such camp. She was 15. Think about what your experience would lead you to believe and think if you had her life. Yet she kept a diary, which her father, the only surviving member of their family, published.
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
– Anne Frank
Perhaps Harris would say it is clear that Frank didn’t have control over her destiny, or no free will. Surely she wouldn't have chosen her life of hardship or her death. But read her words again, one more time, and tell me she didn’t do just what she said she could.