Choices

Everything is a choice; and choices have consequences. Making a choice that has bad consequences doesn’t imply blame e.g. if you walk down the proverbial dark alley – not that dark alleyways are the premium location choice for assailants - and are assaulted, you’re not to blame for being victimized, but your choice to take this route, certainly helped facilitate the crime i.e. if you weren’t in that location, you wouldn’t have been attacked. Our choices, behaviors and actions have consequences; sometimes our choices are limited by circumstance, and other times they are conscious and well considered. Yesterday, whilst teaching our free women’s OC/Pepper Spray class, I explained how when I become adrenalized but have not yet managed to identify and/or evaluate the threat, I will reach into my pocket and take hold of my spray; making sure that my thumb is on the trigger and that I’m ready to deploy it, etc. One of the responses I received to this was, “let’s be realistic, most women’s coats have the pockets sewn up”. Obviously, there are other places where a spray can be carried such as in a purse or bag, however if the point being made is that there might be times when you are wearing clothes where you don’t have a place to store/carry a defensive spray, or you won’t have a bag with you to put it in, that is a choice, which means you won’t be able to have a spray with you – and by making that choice, you have to accept that were you to be attacked, you would not have a tool on you that could help increase your survival chances, etc. I’m not suggesting that your wardrobe – male or female - should be dictated solely by your personal safety needs, however we should be aware about how certain choices we make, may increase our vulnerability, and look for ways to mitigate and reduce this.

When Tolstoy was young, he and two friends, formed the White Polar Bear Club. To join, and new member had to stand in a corner for 30 minutes and not think about a white bear. The point of the exercise was to ensure that the membership never exceeded three persons, as intentional thought suppression isn’t possible i.e. you can’t actively not thing about something, because as soon as you consciously try not to think about something you are. When people tell me that they try not to think about the threats and dangers in the world that they may face, they are in fact thinking about them. What they’re choosing, is not to engage with these thoughts, so that they don’t have to work them through to produce possible solutions, such as cutting the pockets of a coat open so as to have a place where you can keep your pepper spray, or wearing clothes/coats with pockets, or carrying a bag where a defensive spray could be kept, etc. These are choices that people are free to make, but they are choices that can have consequences. I understand that carrying a defensive spray is an acknowledgment that the world we live in contains individuals who want to cause us harm, and that is not a nice thing to think about, however it is realistic to consider the risks and dangers we may face; and not thinking about them is a choice that carries with it potentially harmful consequences.

People will sometimes create elaborate and extreme scenarios, so that they can tell themselves that they have thought about their personal safety, but have concluded that there are no solutions available to them i.e. there is no point thinking any further about personal safety because there are some situations where there are so many odds stacked against you that there is little to nothing you can do. This is a choice. I will sometimes be asked questions along the lines of what I would do, if in the middle of the night I woke up to find a group of four men standing over me with AK-47s pointed at my head (pause)…and my feet were tied to the bedposts (pause)…and I was handcuffed (pause)…and INSERT HERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT WOULD MAKE ANY POSSIBLE SOLUTION PRESENTED IMPOSSIBLE. If, when you answer, you talk about the likelihood of such a scenario, or of preventable measures you could take to prevent such a gang/group gaining access to you, this is usually rebuffed, and moved over quickly with, “Yeah, but what would you do if it did happen?” Because there isn’t a 100% guaranteed “technique” that deals with this scenario, it is concluded that self-defense doesn’t work. This conclusion is a choice. It’s a choice that means you don’t have to think about your personal safety, that you don’t have to consider how you would deal with a mugging, an aggressive panhandler, an obnoxious drunk in a bar etc. or any number of much more likely scenarios. It’s a choice, and people are obviously free to make such choices, however choices have consequences.

When confronted by violence and involved in an aggressive altercation/confrontation, you still have a choice to ignore what is happening, however it’s not a safe/good choice – it may also be a situation that doesn’t necessitate a physical/forceful response; it may be possible to exit or deescalate the incident (however both of these options require you to make a choice). To paraphrase a Haim Zut quote, “If you are attacked once in twenty years, you will wish you had trained for twenty years.” i.e. you will wish you had made a choice to accept and train to deal with violence, long before you find yourself staring it in the face. Pacifism, rejecting responsibility for your safety, and convincing yourself that resisting violence is futile, may all seem reasonable choices when you are out of harms way, and believe that bad things happen to other people, however when you are actually facing someone who has chosen to cause you and/or your loved ones/family members harm, you may find yourself regretting your choices.