Let Me Tell You About My Stress

So, one thing our recent readings have been making me think about is the nature of choice and the actual control we have over our own lives.
Within many of the works we’ve read this semester, there have been themes about choice and whether we actually have control over our own lives. Within many of these works these themes have arisen through the ideas of fate and free will, Cat’s Cradle and Supernatural being good examples of this. Furthermore, this idea of the removal of agency certainly exists within Aura and, while not about fate, Aura certainly touches upon it, at least a bit, in saying things like ‘it was as though the advertisement were meant for you’ (I’m going to be honest; I’m too lazy to go get my book from minor, but it definitely says something like what I paraphrased in the first few pages. I’m so sorry). At the same time, on some level House of Danger (which I’m going to go ahead and refer to as Choose Your Own Adventure) takes an opposing tact. It’s not about fate, but, beyond that, in its very structure it allows its reader at least some agency. The story, at least on some level, is not predestined. At the same time, as we discussed in class, that idea of agency is mostly falsified. You choose, but you don’t really as the impact of your decision is unchangeable ultimately your choice has no weight on your ability to affect your outcome and all the while your choices are constrained by the same structure that gives you agency. In talking about this we talked about things like childhood punishment tactics, but all the while I was thinking “this sounds like my life”.
I don’t believe in fate or destiny or anything like that, but I also don’t usually feel like I create my own path. I think a clear example of this is in how I feel about course selection. Today while registering for courses I absolutely had the ability to select courses out of a group of marginally limited options. I had an early enough time where most of the classes that interested me were open (sorry if you didn’t). My parents aren’t pressuring me to take anything except for that which I think I would enjoy; they don’t care what I major in (they don’t not care, but you get what I mean); they aren’t weighing in. Still, despite all the (comparative) freedom I may have to choose, I still feel like I’m kind of in a choose your own adventure book. What courses I take both affect me and don’t affect me, in that I think the biggest impact my courses have is on my happiness next semester, especially since I honestly have a really, really limited idea of my perspective major. This feeling of being in a choose your own adventure book is only deepened when it comes to choosing a major in that I feel like any choice sets you on some unknowable path, but the choice is only a stop in the path, no where near the end result, and even with this seemingly big decision, the options are only menially limited (my cousin was a business major, but he’s working for the human genome project… you never know where you’ll end up). This feeling is only furthered by the feeling that this choice is one created by structural constraints (I keep reminding myself that it’s okay not to know what I want… but I still have to know a year from now). I think all of this culminates in this feeling that I have that my life is less created my my own actions and more by the constraints that surround me, constraints of which I’m probably not even aware.
Like almost everything else, this situation leaves me thinking about Moby Dick. There’s this chapter in Moby Dick called whale lines in which Ishmael describes these thin lines that wrap around the whalers in the boat, lines of which the whalers could be unaware until they throw the harpoon, sending the lines flying after. These tiny lines which lie in the boat seem menial, but if a whaler is unknowingly entangled in one when he throws the harpoon, he will follow it overboard, likely to his death. All in all, this means that the whalers must be careful in their movements, maintaining the balance, all the while maintaining their focus on the pursuit of the whale. The whale lines that affect these whalers are also present in our lives; as Ishmael says,  "...so the graceful repose of the line, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought into actual play - this is a thing which carries more of true terror than any other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men live enveloped in whale-lines."