Free will is the most important gift we are given as people. To be able to, within our circumstances, make our own choices for our lives is kind of amazing when you think about it.
We make decisions and think through with logic, flaunting our free will and morals, until wham; emotion comes in and we fall in love.
Love is the ultimate unpredictable force. In movies and stories we'll sometimes give people the magical gift of controlling another person, changing circumstances and lives, save for love. We aren't willing to hand over the ability to make us fall in love even in fiction and fairy tale.
"Follow your heart but take your brain with you" should be tattoo'd someplace I see daily for I am incredibly guilty of getting wrapped up in the passion of something or someone and losing my thoughts. In men we'd call that 'driven' but being a girl it isn't encouraged, keeping these two in balance is a learning curve that I've finally started to master.
On the flip side of this is the other extreme, I have watched with envy as a friend of mine chooses their emotion. This person can remove all feeling and reduce a situation to pure logic. Not to say they don't feel, I'm sure they do, it's just their mind can overpower it and no choice is ever made based on feeling. The steadiness that comes from living that way makes me wish I had it, even if it is perceived by others as cold.
While I tend to ride the highest high and then suffer lows when they break apart, my friend is spared the low... but also the high. At day's end they are happy that way as am I my way and neither of us intends to change because there isn't a right or a wrong way to love. I could tell the friend that they are missing out on that fizzy spark when something really interests me making me feel totally alive and they could tell me that many tears and heartache can be avoided if I thought first and chose what I allowed in.
In ancient Greece culture, they didn't even believe in the freedom of thought, Gods controlled everything. If they felt/thought a brave thought it was given to them as an order by Apollo. Love was directed by Athena, etc. Attributing these thoughts and choices you make based on an order of a God/Goddess and not yourself is kind of like a get of jail free card. "Sorry honey, I had to sleep with her, Athena told me to by making me full of lust".
Versus a culture like Buddhists in India who felt that total enlightenment came hand in hand with complete control over your own thoughts (and therefor emotions).
Whichever way we manage to get there, I still think the ultimate robber of freewill is totally worth it.
"There is hardly a more gracious gift that we can offer somebody than to accept them fully and to love them almost despite themselves" E Gilbert
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