Pointing out the existence of individual choice is at once liberating and misleading. Audrey is correct that labeling those who are struggling in dire circumstances as being “without choice” is dis-empowering for both the observer and the observed—it suggests that there’s no agency, no free will to be exercised. More than that, it has a tendency to mute the person who’s struggling, because it suggests that there’s nothing they are doing, or can be doing, to effectuate change. Recognizing the existence of choice for all persons, no matter the circumstances, is the first, and perhaps most important, step to making change happen and to living deliberately.

At the same time, the road to actually choosing is much longer and much harder for some than for others. Children, who lack life experience and development, have a narrower range of choices available to them than adults do. Likewise with the mentally disabled, the horribly impoverished, or the desperately oppressed. So, the existence of choice, while always real and tangible, is not equally achieved for all.

For those of us lucky enough to be in a position to be reading on our computers travel-blog posts about the joy of living deliberately, though, Audrey’s point I think is especially well made. We are among the very few who are wealthy with choice, and the failure to recognize that wealth, and acknowledge it meaningfully, is not only a personal shame, but also a tremendous waste.

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There are many reasons people don’t stand up for what is right (right, also being a loaded word). Sometimes it’s sheer selfish interest. There were those who didn’t know or at least not the extent of the atrocities. There were those who fooled themselves. There were those who chose to protect their families and loved ones. And there were plenty in Nazi Germany who were happy to get rid of the immigrants and outsiders who were taking their jobs, land and all the rest of the same message we hear repeated in plenty of other countries and situations.

I’m not entirely sure that all applies to what I say in my post, though. Because the simple act of understanding that a person has been robbed of choice is not mutually exclusive with their power to act.

I blame the miscommunication here on my wording. It is not that I truly disagree with you. In fact, I think we’re probably describing two facets of the same ideology. I mainly intended to point out that it is important to honor and respect what happens to a person who has experienced such a colossal loss of choice.

I began thinking about this while working with my friend Ali on his novella The Book of Shapur. I spoke with a number of people in exile from Iran and other places and began to see how profoundly the separation from where and what you call the comfort of home changes a person. Many of those I talked to say they are different now, that they’ll never be the same. That they no longer know how to love or trust.

It was painful just hearing them describe their experiences and made me realize how lucky I am for not being able to completely understand.

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While I understand what you are saying about choice, I still believe that every human being has the ability to make choices, even under the most difficult of circumstances. Even if choices available are extremely limited, a person still has the power to choose how to react or act (or not). For me, it disempowers them to assume they don’t. It also takes away from acknowledging the incredible strength needed by those people who chose to act differently than others in that circumstance.

Having said that, I also can’t imagine what my reaction would be if I were a Haiti earthquake survivor or if I had to live under a totalitarian regime or was born into a poor low caste family in India. I have no illusions that I would have the strength of one of the Haitians I hear about on NPR who are organizing their neighborhoods to action even when they have nothing to their name or of one of the Soviet dissidents I used to work with or of some of the women I met on a project in West Bengal.

I once heard a South African woman involved with the Truth and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa speak and she said, “We always ask ourselves why there weren’t more people standing up to apartheid or Naziism. But the better question to ask is: why did so many people go along?”

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