Hobson's Choice

My pet peeve is the utterance of the phrase “I had no choice.” I hate that. It’s both pathetic and inaccurate. Whether you know it or not, you always have a choice, even if all of them suck.

Example A:
A man holds you at gunpoint unless you reveal the whereabouts of the Super Friends. You have a choice. You can not tell him and risk him shooting you, or you can tell him the secret location, thus sentencing the Super Friends to a certain doom. These are both choices. (Carmi would call this Hobson’s Choice). There are more choices too. You could make up a false, but believable lie. You could try to start a psychoanalysis session with him to find out why he is so focused on death and destruction. You could pretend to faint. And so on and so on.

Example B:
You’ve fallen into a rapidly moving river and are rushing towards a perilous fall. You have a choice. You can accept your fate, or you can flail around and look for a route to escape. And even within these two choices there are more choices. If you accept your fate, then you can a) sing show tunes at the top of your lungs until you plunge over the edge, b) ponder all of your loved ones until you make the fall, c) attempt to drown yourself before you reach the edge.

“Trill,” you ask, “What the hell is your point?”

“First of all,” I reply, “Don’t call me Trill. It’s Trillian. Second, I’m just sick to death of the complete lack of accountability that seems to be the trademark of today’s society.”

Truly, the vast majority of people seem to think that their fate is controlled by some external and nebulous “they”, when in actual fact, we have choices, and are responsible for our own fate. We get the chance every second of every day to improve our lot. Certainly we can’t control all aspects of our life, but the choices we make with the cards we are dealt is the difference between the “done to” and the “doers”.

End of rant.