One of my all time favourite novels is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I first read it when I was nineteen. It was the catalyst for a series of positive changes in my internal world, though I couldn't have told you why at the time.
Well, now I know why. It's because of who Steinbeck is and what he stands for. Because in spite of the dark forces at work when he was at his most prolific, Steinbeck never lost sight of his belief that human nature is good, that its creative capacities are precious, and that the human capacity to choose is divine.
Recently I started thinking about the idea of karma, sparked by a few conversations with members of the Nichiren Buddhist community. Their strand of Buddhism focuses on overcoming one's karma (roughly translated as the law of cause and effect) on a day to day basis. From my understanding, karma is accumulated through every thought and action a person experiences. Most of us go through life buffeted by the tides of karma that are already in motion. But through deliberate practice and study, we can overcome these tides and create our own karma.
This reminded me of a major theme in East of Eden: the human ability to choose good over evil, the difficult over the default, in spite of the powerful forces that sway us elsewhere.
“‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”
I wonder: would we ever have gotten anywhere, as a species, if it wasn't for the human capacity to choose?