Man’s fate has been predetermined, and his path has been preordained: to have a vision in unfavorable conditions and to pursue unlimited ends with limited means. He is given the illusion of choice. Like being blindfolded and handed a torch in a dense maze, like a puppet being controlled by a higher hand, like a character in a play acting out an already written script, he is made to ‘choose’. And these choices are not easy choices; they are, in fact, sacrifices. Of a thousand quite similar stories, this is one that indicates the difficulty of man’s choices and how his sacrifices only serve to increase the pain in his heart. In a land far away, there was a boy—a bright young lad. Among his peers, he excelled. In academics, sports, and every other activity, he had no equal. All this was thanks to the iron rod training he received from his father. His father, who had also been bright as a kid, his father, who was given a scholarship to one of the best schools in the country, was a happy-go-lucky chap. Well, at least he was, until he impregnated the boy’s mother, the product of which was the boy himself. Since then, he has developed a morose outlook on life. The father had trained the boy in the harsh ways of life, forcing him to adopt a very strict lifestyle. He once told the boy that living with one’s parents meant living under subsidized conditions. So he had to get his priorities straight and focus on his ambitions. Life is harsher; suffering his constant, he would yell at the boy while flogging him for the tiniest of his mistakes. And surely, the boy became a cold, ambitious young man. Sometimes the father wondered if he didn’t deny the boy the joys of childhood. But he would often brush away this thought. The boy has to make sacrifices for a successful adulthood. He must not end up like me, with a dead-end job and four mouths to feed, he would tell himself. He has to make better choices. The boy was admitted to the university on a fully paid scholarship, of course. It was on the university campus that he met the girl. The girl whose beauty illuminated his gloomy life, whose beautiful smile sent butterflies through his stomach, whose voice made his heart skip. It was at this moment that he tripped and fell in love. The feeling was mutual, and the connection was instantaneous. It was not a matter of choice; they both had no control over it. She was not an engineering student like he was; she was in mass communication. They saw each other more frequently over the next couple of days; anyone would think they were headed towards happiness ever after. But fate had other plans. The boy was not as politically inclined as the girl was. She was more open-minded. She was often in the company of older and politically active male colleagues. The boy went home on a break after the session ended. After the usual scrutiny of the boy’s transcript, the father was surprised to see the boy spending more time with his phone and not on his books or in his automechanic friend’s workshop, where the boy would sometimes go to get his hands busy. The father’s heart dropped when he discovered that the cause of this change in behavior was a woman. The father was dissatisfied, and he let the boy know. He told the boy the story of his own misdemeanor, the story of his own poor choices. The boy was losing sight of his goal. The girl was manipulating him. Why was he talking to her in the first place? Doesn’t he know that when he becomes successful, he will have the luxury of picking his choice of women? After all, women are trophies and symbols of success. Rich men marry beautiful women, while the poor men get whoever’s not taken by the rich men. The words of the father stuck with the boy. When the boy got back to school, he started examining the girl more closely. He started finding fault in everything she did. And soon, cracks started to appear in their relationship. She wasn’t being ambitious enough with her studies; she was flirting with other men, he thought to himself. Things came to a head when the students protested against the military junta  in their country. He distanced himself from it. She called him a weakling and then asked him to choose between her and his career, or the future of the nation and his own selfish interests, as she had put it. Of course, he chose his books. It was a very painful decision to let her go, but he convinced himself that it was for the greater good. He made the choice. The girl was arrested while protesting, and she became a national symbol of rebellion. The Junta was later toppled, and democracy took its place. He went on to establish his own engineering company, which later grew and became a multinational. At some point, he was among the richest men in the world. The girl also did fine. She won a Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian and activist efforts, which spread beyond her own country throughout her continent. Decades later, married with his own kids, and watching her spread her wings in her activism career, her voice echoing on his TV, reminding him of his cowardice. His heart felt hollow and empty. No amount of money or career accomplishment could fill the void she left in his heart. As the boy played with his own son that night, the innocence in the kid’s eyes tore his heart apart. This is a story, like many others, a tale too familiar, of how one can’t eat one’s cake and have it, of the choices people make for their ambitions. If only man did not want so much, then maybe he would … Read more