On decisions

 

I make my own decisions, right?

We all do.

We’re smart people.

We decide what we eat, what we drink.

we decide who we like,  

we decide what we think.

We decide when we sleep

we decide where we go,

and we decide who and what to keep, in our life.

 

But do we really?

 

I decide that I want to eat meat and cheese

and that I love potatoes and dislike lasagna.

I therefore decide to order rather a steak over the lasagna or bolognese when given the choice.

I decide to think that I would like to marry one day

and have a bunch of children.

I decide that I think god doesn’t exist

and that the plastic cutting board should go into the dishwasher when dirty.

I decide the kind of people that I like and how I approach them in new settings.

I also decide that I enjoy my own company and

I sometimes decide to rather stay at home and enjoy my solitude over a night out with friends.

I decide at all times when I should go to sleep.

I decide that I would like to go early to bed some nights to be fresh the day after and

I decide that I’ll take the consequences of allowing my creativity to take me to places until 3 in the morning.

I decide to collect all of the movie tickets that I have ever bought

and I decide to keep diaries of all my feelings and all my thoughts.

 

I make my own decisions.

Can’t you see?

 

But.

 

My mom used to make horrible lasagna when I grew up.

The spaghetti bolognese was the same disaster.

Today I choose not to eat those dishes when ever I can,

even though they were to be made by a master.

I come from a family of hunters and one of my earliest memories of meat

was when my childhood kitchen was covered in blood from half a cow,

and this event would frequently repeat.

 

I come from a scattered family broken up between different countries.

Growing up in a lot of different places

with only my mother, father and little brother.

I always longed for more people around and that I had other siblings to fill up the spaces

of nieces and nephews I never really got to get to know.

I grew up in a family that was non religious

and with the general rule that if it would fit in the dishwasher, it was put in the dishwasher.

 

I have moved around a lot in my life. More than most people consider normal.

An average of once a year.

24 times in my 25 years to be exact.

Making me doubt if I even belonged somewhere.

I moved around so often that I never got to settle,

and quickly forbid myself from doing it,

not trusting I would stay

- because I was in fact just leaving shortly any way.

I’m therefor insecure around new people.

I often think that I should not connect too deeply.

I think that I don’t deserve deep connections completely

- that is not meant for me.

I learned to enjoy my own company

and become self dependent

and that the only thing I could count on abundantly

was rather the thought of me than we.

 

I live in a society where life revolves around work.

We build our weeks, our days, our clock, our vocabulary around work.

We go to sleep at a certain time because we are going to work the day after.

We consider weekends as ‘time off’ -

and in that saying that those two days are the exception from ‘normal’.

Meaning work is ‘normal’. What a disaster.

 

I have always been immensely afraid of death which naturally

makes me nostalgic, deeply, romantically.

I cling on to memories passed and fantasise about the way down my own track

that never will come back.

 

So, do I still think that I decide?

That I make all of my own decisions?

That I am unique, that I am completely independent in my thoughts?

That I am my own master, that I can control my life and all of my shots?

 

Because it turns out that everything I think,

everything I do,

everything I say,

comes from somewhere.

I am influenced, whether I like it or not

by all of the things that have surrounded me.

I have been brought up, by the people around me,

by the ideas around me,

the things around me,

by my surroundings, thoughts and projections.

I have been shaped into the mould of my current self

by things that have happened to me,

the things that have been done to me,

the things that have been said around me.

 

I really don’t decide anything.

Can’t you see?

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Written by our first external guest. 

Júlíanna Ósk Hafberg.