Live Deliberately

It’s a question I ask a child when another child has hurt her in some minor way: “Do you think he did it deliberately?” It’s a question juries are bound to consider. It’s a word that is often used with reference to misconduct. But deliberation is a powerful practice and a good measure of maturity.

The original root word was librare—to weigh, though later it also came to be associated with liberare—to free or liberate. Both root meanings are pertinent: to live deliberately is to weigh our choices with minds and hearts free of undue influence—to act as free and responsible human beings.

I am blessed in knowing many thoughtful people, but one of them in particular comes to mind when I think of deliberation. When you ask him a question, he pauses to consider; sometimes he stops walking and stands quietly for a moment to think. Sometimes he asks a question to clarify before venturing an opinion. This may sound a bit tedious, but it’s actually endearing. For one thing, you know he’s giving your question all due consideration, taking it seriously, weighing your words and his own. He also leavens his weighty thoughts with gentle humor and a capacity for irony that becomes any serious truth teller.

Deliberation recognizes the roots and consequences of choice. It takes account of the likely effects of a choice on others and on oneself, of possible complications, of what risks the rewards might merit. When it’s a well-practiced habit, all this weighing and foreseeing and measuring and imagining can happen almost instantly. The questions come almost automatically: What will this choice cost in time, energy, money? How will it involve those around me? Others I don’t know, but who may be affected? What is likely to change? And if some oppose it, how am I prepared for their opposition? And the wonderful question Quakers raise in response to any invitation life extends: Is this of God?

A dear, funny, wise and wild woman I have long numbered among my dearest friends has taught me the deep pleasure of deliberation in long conversations, usually on long walks, that open time and space for considering an issue from all sides. She’s good at raising unlikely questions. She’s also given, now and then, to dropping a sentence that stays with me like an ancient adage. One of these, uttered in an almost offhand way, has provided me with a reliable point of return in my own deliberations over the years: “Every choice you make moves either in the direction of life or in the direction of death.”

“Therefore choose life.” These simple words from Deuteronomy shine like a pole star among the wide scatterings of circumstance and competing goods that become visible when choice becomes necessary. What is the life-giving choice? The loving one? The one that comes with lightness of being and clarity? Choosing life and choosing it deliberately is a daily practice. It happens in small noticings and quiet, consistent acts of consent to a voice that invites, but doesn’t insist, meeting us at every juncture and opening a path.

Image: a painter considers color choice (personal photo)