“We are simply making these choices unconsciously.”
Both a “response” and a “reaction” are a choice.
A “reaction” is an unconscious, reflexive choice like the angry remark we make when we’re triggered. It is an unconscious habitual choice like when we drink far more alcohol than we planned. It is a split-second decision like fight-flight-freeze. Our reactions contribute to the toxic, destructive world (P-B) we live in today.
Many in today’s culture “use” alcohol and drugs, social media, video games and much more to help us cope with an ever-present anxiety, with fear of the future, or the pain and suffering from some past experience. “Alcohol was also a medication. I drank to quiet angst or because I was lonesome. I drank, it took years to realize, because I had clinical depression. Eventually I treated the depression but kept drinking. Alcohol was my stress reducer, my reality fighter, the conferrer of artificial joys.”[i]
Many Americans claim they would like to stop “using,” but that requires, first and foremost, a change of mind. Then the behavior will change. “The paradox of change is that there is an illusion of its being difficult since it involves overcoming the inertia of fear and our conditioned reactive behavior [reaction]. But, in fact, when we live in the NOW, life is made easier, fear is reduced, and destructive bad habits are eliminated, hence, increasing the ease with which life can be lived and enjoyed [response].”[ii]
As noted above, a “reaction” is an unconscious choice. In contrast, a “response” is a conscious choice. When we resist the temptation to habitually react to stress and anxiety in our daily life, that is a response. When we recognize what is happening to us stems from fear and instead we choose to act with understanding, that is a response, knowing that in responding we are shifting to a more compassionate worldview (P-A).
Steven Harrison, in his book Do Nothing (1997), offers greater insight into the concept of choosing response over reaction. “Now that we have the conflict in the immediate present [trigger], what do we do with it? Absolutely nothing [a response]. To do anything … is to give it substance or energy [a reaction]. To attempt to approach it, to manipulate it, to make it better, to make it go away, simply entrenches [it]. … If we do nothing, what occurs? Nothing occurs. The conflict has no one to claim it. It has no energy. It has no opposite. It can no longer exist. It is no longer an aspect of our reality.”[iii]
Simple Reality offers the Point of Power Practice to help us make conscious, compassionate choices when triggered. “Choosing response over reaction is a perfect transformative prayer practice.”[iv]
Insight # 75 comes to us from Deepak Chopra (b. 1946) is an Indian-born American author and alternative-medicine advocate.
“Most of us—even though we are infinite choice-makers—have become the bundles of conditioned reflexes [reactions] that are constantly being triggered by people and circumstances into predictable outcomes of behavior … and we forget that these are still choices that we are making in every moment of our existence. We are simply making these choices unconsciously.”[v]
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Additional Reading:
- Response and Reaction, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 2
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[i] Wartik, Nancy. “How I Kicked My Drinking Problem.” The New York Times Sunday. February 2, 2020, p. 10.
[ii] Henry, Roy Charles. “Change.” The ABC’s Of Simple Reality, Vol 1. May 2018, p. 68.
[iii] Henry, Roy Charles. “Time.” Science & Philosophy: The Failure of Reason in the Human Community, 2015, p. 249.
[iv] Henry, Roy Charles. “Perfection.” The ABC’s Of Simple Reality, Vol 2. May 2018, p. 94.
[v] Chopra, Deepak. The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. San Rafael: Amber-Allen Publishing, 1994, p. 41.
