The Gift and the Choice by Zachary Phillips When you can see your future,
How do you choose?
Every option has suffering.
Every path leads to death.
Exponentially branching,
Your vision fades the deeper you go.
You can't hold it all.
You don't have the processing power.
It hurts you,
This gift.
You feel it all.
All at once.
You feel it all.
All at once.
So you block it.
Mentally put a stop to it.
You turn away from it and curse it.
This leaves you dull.
Blind to the beauty of your choice.
Blind to the beauty of your choice.
The choice you made.
The choice to turn your gift off.
For there is still life.
There is still love.
Vivid like a flower in the dirt.
There is still life.
There is still love.
Vivid like a flower in the dirt.
If only you knew how to look.
There is a real risk of falling into existential dread.
A feeling of general pointlessness or meaninglessness with the process of life.
Because it's.
.
.
It doesn't take much contemplation to realize that no matter what choices we make,
No matter where we go,
Inevitably we will pass.
Inevitably everyone will pass.
That's just a reality of what it means to live.
So when you can see your future,
When you can see that's where we're going to end up ultimately,
And that on the way to that inevitable demise there'll be suffering.
You know,
Our connections with others,
Our capacity to love,
To feel joy,
To feel any positive emotion,
Always has this other side of the coin aspect to it.
Working behind the scenes,
Knowing that,
And telling us that,
Hey,
This is going to end,
And that end will hurt.
So what I wanted to highlight with this poem is that when we see those pathways leading to suffering and death,
There is a real temptation to block it off,
To hold ourselves away from it,
To not embrace life at its fullest due to fear,
Due to worry about what will come.
No matter how hard we try,
We can't hold every possibility in our mind.
No matter how hard we try,
We can't foresee every outcome or hold all the possibilities.
And this can lead us down paths of anxiety and depression and other issues,
Because we were worried about the pain and we were worried about the end and we want to stop it.
But unfortunately this act of dissociating and blocking and moving away from it leads to further problems,
Because we're traveling down this path no matter what.
We are heading to the inevitable end no matter what.
But there's beauty on the way.
There is beauty.
There is connection.
There is choice.
There is joy.
There is love.
There is all of these things that make the path worth traveling.
When you can see your future,
How do you choose?
When you can see your future,
How do you choose?
Every option has suffering.
Every path leads to death.
Exponentially branching,
Your vision fades the deeper you go.
You can't hold it all.
You don't have the processing power.
It hurts you this gift.
You feel it all,
All at once.
You feel it all,
All at once.
So you block it,
Mentally put a stop to it.
You turn away from it and curse it.
This leaves you dull,
In the end,
In the end,
This leaves you dull,
Blind to the beauty of your choice.
Blind to the beauty of your choice,
The choice you made,
The choice to turn your gift off.
For there is still life.
There is still love,
Vivid like a flower in the dirt,
If you only knew how to look.
A student once asked me,
What's the point,
Sir?
If this all ends,
Why are we here?
What's the point if it just ends?
I was thinking about it and said,
Well,
Let's for the moment take religion out of it.
Let's take spirituality out of it.
Let's take all the metaphysical unknowns out of it.
What are we left with?
What do we know?
We know that we're here now.
Prior to our life,
There was nothing.
Blackness,
A void.
And after,
There's nothing.
Blackness,
A void.
But right now,
There is something.
Right now is the single point of brightness in an infinite expanse of darkness.
Life,
Color,
White.
Right now is the single point of illumination in a potentially infinite expanse of darkness.
So that's what makes it important.
That's what makes it worth living.
If we only know how to look,
How to see the beauty of the moment,
To see that this is what is.
That the color and the radiance and the warmth and the love is the point.
That's what gives life meaning.
Our life,
Right now,
Is the point of difference.
If we only knew how to look.
So I try to make the opposite choice.
To lean in,
Push forward,
And go for life.
Yes,
We will end up passing.
Yes,
There will be suffering.
But that's the cost.
That's the admission fee for the beauty that is life.
When you can see your future,
How do you choose?
When you can see your future,
How do you choose?
Every option has suffering.
Every path leads to death.
Exponentially branching,
Your vision fades the deeper you go.
You can't hold it all.
You can't hold it all.
You don't have the processing power.
It hurts you this gift.
You feel it all,
All at once.
You feel it all,
All at once.
So you block it.
Mentally put a stop to it.
You turn away from it and curse it.
This leaves you dull.
Blind to the beauty of your choice.
Blind to the beauty of your choice.
The choice you made.
The choice to turn your gift off.
For there is still life.
There is still love.
Vivid like a flower in the dirt.
For there is still life.
There is still love.
Vivid like a flower in the dirt.
If only you knew how to look.
