I always feel this "choice" idea as gaslighting every single, bloody, damn time that someone suggests it!! We are born into abusive families, poverty, slavery, violence, and so on. Tell me: at what point is there ever a choice? I feel it to be so much more liberating to know that we all have been victims of circumstances. There is no one that is "better" at living life than another. Until we have compassion for each other, the gaslighting and constant putting down of the other through this 'choice' and 'responsibility' concept keeps us in continual pain and suffering. (We have people brainwashed at such a level that they believe that they have actually achieved something because they now tell others what to do to heal trauma... heal something that they will never know anything about because we all have unique life experiences when it comes to trauma.
There is not some magical day when I get to make a choice about the direction my life takes. The choices we make are about what to wear that day or which flavor ice cream to eat. (Ice cream is making us sick by feeding viruses, we have never had a choice to eat healthy, until now.) It is all so very complicated to explain because it is all predicated on false information and conditioning. All of humankind is dis-functioning on faulty belief systems. No wonder I can feel endless despair. What knocks me out if it, from time to time, is knowing that other people literally cannot see what is not on their maps. I'm a pioneer in the terrain of following my own heart's compass. I am mapping out my own frontier.