FREE DETERMINISM LESSON 3

POSSIBILITIES

Every moment begins somewhere.

Your body, your history, your knowledge, your resources, your emotions, the people around you, and the place you are in all help create your starting conditions.

But starting conditions are only the beginning.

From those conditions, possibilities emerge.

Some possibilities are obvious. Some are difficult to see. Some require knowledge you do not yet have. Some require resources, practice, timing, or help from another person. Some possibilities exist only briefly before circumstances change.

Two people can stand in what appears to be the same situation and still face very different possibilities.

One person may recognize an opportunity because of something they learned years earlier. Another person may never realize the opportunity existed.

A choice can also create possibilities that were previously unavailable.

Learning creates new abilities. Practice creates skill. Saving creates resources. Meeting someone can introduce information. Asking a question can reveal an option. Taking one path can lead to opportunities that could not have been encountered from another path.

Chance also matters.

You can choose what you do without controlling everything that happens afterward. Unexpected opportunities, setbacks, timing, other people, and events outside your control can change what becomes possible next.

This is why Free Determinism does not describe life as a single predetermined road.

You begin from real conditions.

Those conditions shape what is possible.

You perceive some of those possibilities.

You make a decision.

You choose.

You experience what follows.

What happens becomes part of your next starting position.

Then a new set of possibilities appears.

1. Your past helps shape what is possible today. What you do today helps shape what becomes possible tomorrow.