Fate or Free Will?

Is choosing to accept the "call" to be a caregiver truly a choice? Or are we pushed by forces or a fate beyond our will?

I was raised a Calvinist, strictly cursed by the theological notion of “predestination”—that God pre-selects some of us for salvation and some of us for damnation (and we can never be entirely sure which one—so ya’ll just follow the rules and submit to God’s will).

“By predestination we mean the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man. All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; …”
—John Calvin as cited in Gentle Reformation

So, upon first reading French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s ideas about human freedom and choice in the 1990s, I shot like a bolt of lightning out of my chair. I finally had a solid counter to the curse of predestination and the subsequent social control behind it.

“I can always choose, but I ought to know that if I do not choose, I am still choosing.”

―Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions

Taking yourself into your inner room to make visible the wiggle room of “choices,” even if it’s a decidedly small space within which you are choosing, can be liberating.

For instance, I could have said “no” to my mother’s query about moving closer to me after her diagnosis of multiple myeloma in 2006 (see my Infinity’s Origin post). I could have leaned into my own diagnosis of “multiple chemical sensitivity” (or “environmental illness”) to push her to move closer to my brother instead, begging off sick.

But was that option socially and relationally available to me? When I hung on the phone with her in that slice of silence after her question, I did not feel it was.

I had been crushed by the mortar and pestle of my own illness, finally gaining a toehold on future health by building a nontoxic home in the mountains—putting all our eggs in that basket for me to get better.

And now, my mother was asking me to be in her health crisis. Was I damned? Cursed?

How would I go to medical appointments with her when my throat still closed up and my head spun from perfumes, colognes, and bathroom deodorizers? When I still became physically numb after exposures to pesticides and herbicides? And when, some days, I could barely get out of bed? Were illness and suffering my destiny?

Buckskin Gulch, a slot canyon in Utah.

Sartre argued a core fact of responsibility—that we need to claim full responsibility for our choices and our actions in life. So, we need to recognize that we’re the ones embracing—or not—the criteria we use to evaluate our actions.

I needed to directly face the unspoken demands inside that silent moment and choose which I would claim as valid and meaningful for myself and which I would cut myself off from.

But what of the environmental, social, and familial constraints? I couldn’t just “will” public spaces to be free of environmental toxins. I couldn’t just disown my fun, formidable, and independent mother, who had given so much to my brother and me (more on that later).

But more, I hadn’t chosen my illness.

Neither had my mother.

That compassion melted my resistance. It pushed me to trust my inner resources, that we would figure out each challenge as we faced it.

In that, I did choose. I did accept the “call”—come what may. I said “yes” to her. And I would renew that “yes” in excruciatingly difficult times, far beyond what I thought I could handle, the next 7 1/2 years.

I felt a different kind of “destiny”—not a curse but a force larger than family and social demands. I felt love knocking on me, asking me to open further, yet further.

But for those of us who do choose to accept the role of caregiver (however small that space of “choice”), in that act, we aren’t letting others who shape our collective lives off the hook.

The social field here reflects “both” “and”: I am individually in this journey, and we are on it together. Our larger social systems (hospitals, big pharma, insurance, care centers, nursing homes, etc.) are dysfunctional, creating barriers and stalling progress toward health and quality of life almost at every turn.

Caregivers often go broke and experience chronic burnout and PTSD from their journey with their loved ones. It shouldn’t be thus. I join in a chorus with so many others who voice all the ways our collective systems need to change.

But inside that phone call with my mom, I cried. My fears became wrapped in a cosmic force of warmth, care, reciprocity, and trust.

“Of course. Of course, I will be with you in this. Of course.”