August 9, 2006I Had No Choice
In the movie The Devil Wears Prada, Andy is the assistant to Miranda, who calls any time of the day or night, expecting Andy to drop whatever she is doing and meet her often trivial demands. When Andy excuses herself from her activities with her friends she explains,
- I have no choice.
The fact is we always have choice, and to claim we don’t abdicates responsibility. We may not like our options, but responsibility requires that we take ownership of the choices we have. Andy could have said, This is the requirement of my job, and so I am choosing to do as she asks. I hope you understand.
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I had to laugh about “I had no choice.” I was raised by a pretty authoritarian parent. So as I approached my adulthood, I took it as a given than any authority figure - teacher, parent, preacher, cop, etc. - was to be deferred to. But when I went away to college, the first and maybe best thing I learned was something from one of my roommates. When she heard me lamenting some task I didn’t think I could say “no” to for the nth time, she exasperatedly said “All you really HAVE to do is die and stink! If you don’t stink before you die, you surely will after!” It shocked me so much to hear someone my own age say something like that, and it effectively helped me form a whole new way of evaluating choices. I’ve been applying that criteria ever since. So when I elect to do something, I know it’s because I really choose to.
Comment by Kathleen — August 9, 2006 @ 5:52 pm