It is almost 1am and I can’t sleep, for no particularly good reason, so I’ve come to write.

In the last few days I’ve had the feeling of determinism creep up on me. When this happens I feel myself taken from place to place as if I were a piece of drifting wood floating on a river. But there are two ways of experiencing this, one is with acceptance and the other is with resignation. I feel I am currently at the latter.

I can trace these feelings to last Thursday, when I discussed an idea with the people from Meetup originating from Michael Sandel, and this was the idea that we all come into this world with certain faculties and circumstances, and that we are really have not much of a say in our life, these faculties, character, and circumstances dictate our life, and so any merit or fault is irrelevant. It sounded reasonable at the time, but as I have given it further thought, I have discovered the—can I call it fallacy?—no, the issue merits much more thought than my limited capacity for philosophy—here it is, deterministic thought.

I came across “The will to believe” by William James, since I read part of it on the phone I can only say that I understood the gist of it, which is: one must believe in free will, one must believe that he has the choice in order to exercise it. This must be, by necessity, a factor in “waking up”, for the deterministic mindset can only lead to the feeling of aimlessness, and this aimlessness is giving up on one’s own freedom. Why intercede in the affairs of my life, if my life plan is already laid out stemming from my character and circumstances in life?

And it seems James struggled very much with this question in his own depression and I understand his conclusion: you cannot prove that you have free will, but you must choose to believe it. “I have a choice”. Today I allowed myself to endure many things that I did not want to experience: an hour long monologue by Gaby complaining about all the things in her life, I smoked cigarettes with her and Moises, pictures of women whom Moises is chasing and I found distasteful, another change of direction in blank.page. Some of these things I accept willingly, others I accepted because they came to me.

Should the day repeat itself in a way in which I believed or exercised my free will, what would have changed? Well, ignoring economic constraints, because I expressed just today to René that I desired very much to go to Spain and walk and escape from my current circumstances—which is strange, because it feels just like when I was chained to my 9-5 job: I had no say about how to live my life.

But I do now, more than ever in my life, but I do not exercise it. I do not say: fuck everything, this is not what I want to do today. And so I feel desires to escape my current situation as to not to have to deal with the task of setting boundaries. I prefer to escape into territory where the boundaries come naturally because I don’t know anybody.

It would seem then that the task is to constantly remind myself: I have this choice. I don’t have to accept that cigarette. I don’t have to see this person. I don’t have to be nice. I choose to exercise my free will.

It is not a matter of avoiding what I do not want to do. It is a matter of consciously choosing what I want to do. For me, it is often easier to go along than to say no. But I must find the inner initiative, the will to believe. Make a choice and participate in life.