BEST DECISION OF HIS LIFE

Looking back I have never really had the chance of simply take any choice. 

I was born, obviously. No-one would disagree on that and there’s no-one that could say differently than that. This is like a fixed, starting point. Everything start from there, otherwise you’re not here and there’s no even the problem to complain about, right?

Here’s the first step: you don’t get to chose if you want to be there, where and when you want to be. You cannot decide to be black, jew, man, tall, with three arms, laser eyes: and that’s the first time that you don’t get to choose. Unfair. And, to seal this foolery, you don’t even get to choose your own name! Hello, I’m Adam; well MY NAME is Adrian. 

A few months that I was in this World and still no choices to be made: they taught me how to walk, how to talk, how to even take a dump! And the amazing thing was that I could not even decide the timing or the style on that: “Oh, your son doesn’t walk in 16 months? That’s strange you should check on him” “”Why your son stutter like this? It’s not normal, it’s weird. You should check on him”. 

I did get checked, many times. And I started to walk straight, and I started to talk smoothly, and I started to behave in the right way, for a while.

I was born rich; probably I should have started with that. That’s where I usually lose people: “Oh but you can have everything, you can do whatever you want, why are you complaining?”. I get your point, but being born how I was, it just mean more rules, more codes of behavior, more people deciding what you should and shouldn’t do.

I never got to decide what to wear: you hear about how the way you dress express yourself, your feelings, your unique personality. But I had someone else that decided what I should put on. Expensive dresses and uncomfortable shoes, with fine figments and golden finishes that when people saw them they used to say: “You look marvelous, a perfect gentleman!”

I didn’t choose the schools that I attended to: “The best one in the country, only the top for your pupils!” They taught us how to write, what to write, when to write. They taught us what is good and what is bad, what they say it happened in the past, who was right and who was wrong, which skills will be useful and which are to be deleted from our brain.

They taught us how to play music, they decided which instrument fit us better, and after that they taught us the regular way to play those. I learnt to play piano because it suited my hands better; they showed me how to replicate Bach, Beethoven, Chopin.

I didn’t choose whether to attend or not Church: they indoctrinated me with the Word of Christ, how to follow the correct path, what’s a sin and what’s a virtue; who to love and who to hate. They told me that He’s right there above, checking what we do and how we use the “free will” that he gave us.

I never had the chance of choosing my friends: all the young generation of the elite of the city, as they say “creme de la creme”; people with no ambitions or any particular view of the world, the only similar trait shared appeared to be the general impossibility for them like for me to have a personal opinion, to make a choice on their own, to exert the famous free will that every Sunday God’s friends in church were propagandizing to us.

I could not choose who to love and how to love. I could not follow my heart, where my thoughts and desires were dragging me. I could not choose how to look the people that I wanted to look in a way that I could not even understand; I could not fulfill what my body was trying to ask me.

I could not have contacts with the “real people”: they were different from us, they were poor, they were with no moral compass, with no sense of decency and honor. They weren’t unlucky, they were simply not fit to success; too lascivious, too lazy, too vicious. Too free, I would have said. But I could not decide the words that I wanted.

I didn’t choose my job, I din’t choose my aspirations, I didn’t choose my hobbies. I didn’t even choose my own family. I had two children that I had with a woman I didn’t and I still don’t love. I gave them names that belonged to my grandfathers, I grew up teaching them what I was taught, so that we will be sure that the circle will not be broken and the status quo will be maintained.

I could not choose to be unhappy: all this time I got watched carefully by who was around, checking my behavior and saying that it was not right, that I was strange, that I was not doing it all properly. They started to say again that “ Someone should better check on me”.

And i got checked, and checked again, and I was found too strange, to unfit for my role: I got cured from what someone else decided that it was a disease, and I spent months reflecting on what I was mistaking and how to follow the correct stream.

They taught me how to think, how to breath, how to leave. They taught me everything and they decided for me for all my life.

And here I am, looking back of a life of decisions that I didn’t take, while I am taking the first decision by myself.

Here, I’m playing this guitar with too big hands to play it properly, looking down from a high, anonymous palace that I chose between thousands of others.

And when the air started whirling in my haircut that the hairdresser made for me, watching the pavement rapidly approaching towards me, that with a smile on my face, I felt the thrill of living a life on your own choices.