The play I had just seen that October night was a phenomenal expose on the lives of two prisoners. It examined the choices in their lives - two concepts inherently irreconcilable for the millions of Americans locked up, choice and life - that are at once simple and heart wrenching.
Searching their way through the legalese and politics of their situations, they must ask themselves, "Where do I go from here?" Never mind that one of them is on Death Row and the other a troubled young man convicted of murder. Never mind that their destinies, at least in the civic world, have already been sealed: death, and life in prison.
Never mind the fact that they have no real choice in anything.
Oddly, it was not the played-out atrocities of the American un-justice system that made my blood boil that particularly unruly autumn night. It was the church sign I snatched a glimpse of while driving back to my idyllic suburban neighborhood.
"Not making a choice is still making a choice," suggested the institution in block capital letters. It was missing a biblical attribution but due to its holy real estate it nonetheless brought honorable mention.
It made me mad, for several reasons. At first I tried to reason with its disjoined logic; how can you make a choice not to make a choice? It carries with it the same common sense that anti-suicide laws subscribe to; you can't be arrested if you're deceased.
But as I sat in my car - pulled over to the side of the road so I could negotiate this irrational edict sent down personally from God - and placed the church sign in the context of the provocative drama's lessons I had just espoused, I realized its further perplexing pathos.
How can we expect significant progress on any legitimate matter if we take a middle-of-the-road stance, if we can't even invoke our right to speak for ourselves?
This needn't apply to just political matters such as the then-upcoming election or the always-contemptuous abortion debate - this is bigger than mere civic law.
More recently, I spent an afternoon at the inspiring Albright-Knox Art Gallery in the midst of the equally inspiring writer Adam Gopnik, a regular contributor to
The New Yorker. The witty essayist speaks earnestly of his philosophy of such politicized matters as choice and culture.
In what Dopnik calls the "secular ritual" of daily life - ordering a sandwich at the deli, pumping gas, reading a newspaper, talking with friends about a recently viewed movie - there are endless possibilities through which our choices can create or destroy sustainable happiness. We can choose, through our willful actions, the attitude and process that provide us with worthwhile results.
A lifelong wayfarer, Dopnik was born in Philadelphia, raised in Montreal and now lives in New York City. Five years spent in Paris, writing cultural essays on the differences between the two bourgeoisie sentimentalities, has given the writer and his young children a worldly view of how ascribing secular rituals is a universal remedy, not an American one.
In anticipation of his recent appearance, Dopnik discussed his philosophy with The Buffalo News. In the interview, he explains that such decisions are about "the way we organize our lives to give them some meaning, and all the little things we do - going to gyms and having children and drinking wine. And that's how we live horribly painful and mortal lives, and we try to give those lives some meaning by ritualizing them."
An academic's way of saying, "We have choices."
For the prisoners in that haunting play, their choices were less about results and more about hope, boundless faith. Seeking redemption in an institution as sadistic as the American penal system is pointless. Only occasionally, if rarely, are prisoners healed by the system and not exploited.
But the choice to believe in something greater than man, while wholly religious by textbook standards, is a method cultural theorists like Gopnik say is more secular in basis than people realize. Reaching divine reality - no matter what that means to you personally - is ultimately in your hands. It's your choice.
Standing up for your right to choose - choosing anything: Paper or plastic? Spend or save? Guilty or not guilty? Move to Canada or stick it out? - is the most sacred right you have as a member of this troubled, dangerous, increasingly corrupt society. Indecisiveness is a form of ignorance, and being proud of that impartiality is a grave mistake.
In the end, though, the choice is yours.
Photo: Courtesy of Matthew Messina, from the RMBERS' Instagram page
