The Experience of Powerlessness and Choice

When everything feels overwhelming when life, people, and even the environment we exist in seem unbearable it often comes down to one core issue: powerlessness. It isn’t scattered across a hundred different problems; it is one fundamental experience, showing up in different forms. We feel powerless against the people around us. We feel powerless against the dynamics of our family. We feel powerless against the limitations of our country, our jobs, our society, our circumstances. When someone reaches a place where they are contemplating leaving this life, it’s rarely about wanting to die. It’s about feeling as though they have no control, no agency, no real ability to shift their experience. In that state, what reason would there be to stay? If nothing can change, why endure it? But here’s the truth: powerlessness is a perception, not a fact. To break free from it, we must simplify. Instead of drowning in the complexity of how trapped we feel, we must shift the focus: "Where do I actually have power?" Even when it seems like there is no choice, there is always one. Sometimes, it’s the hardest choice imaginable, but it still exists.

For example, someone might say: "I have no choice but to stay in this job." But in reality, they do. They could get up, walk out the door, and never return. The question isn’t whether the choice exists the question is why they aren’t making it. And that’s the key: acknowledging that we are making choices, even when they are difficult or undesirable. We must stop saying “I can’t” when what we mean is “I am choosing not to.” This shift alone cracks open the illusion of powerlessness and reveals the reality that we do, in fact, have options.

There’s a story about the spiritual teacher. At the height of his success, he reached a breaking point. Instead of staying in a life he no longer wanted, he simply dropped his house keys down a drain and walked away. He never returned. He embraced a radical kind of freedom one that most people fear but that always exists as a possibility. Now, not everyone needs to take such an extreme step, but the lesson remains: freedom is always a choice. Yes, it can be terrifying. Yes, it may come with great cost. But the awareness that we have the power to choose even in difficult situations can be deeply liberating. So the real work is this: shift the focus. Instead of reinforcing the belief that we are trapped, we must ask, "If I choose to stay, what choices do I have?" "If I commit to this relationship, this job, this place, this country what choices still remain within it?" It is not about the external circumstances. It is about seeing where power exists even within them. The moment we stop believing in our own powerlessness, the game changes.