An officer scanned a parking violation ticket on a van as I walked by her after parking a half-dozen cars behind. It was a pitch-dark 5:15 AM Friday at the bus stop, and many surrounding apartment residents barely woke up. I unintentionally sparked a debate among other passengers. The discussion was about whether the driver, passenger, or both had to use the nearby convenience store due to an urgent need. One of the passengers quickly refuted that the officer might have checked the bonnet and determined that the car had not been used for a while. Some contended that, to all parking officers, infractions are all the same, regardless of the specifics. Without complicated options, how would the world appear?
What were the options for her? The officer leaves a ticket or shows mercy while unsure if there is a provision in her duty to leave a warning note instead. She could check it out and issue a ticket if the car was parked in the same spot the next day. At least during workdays, the street was within her route to work. Otherwise, it would have been challenging to discover that the car was parked illegally without enough ambient light to distinguish it, which we justified. Both options in the group discussion seemed adequate and are equally good! So, how are we supposed to choose? Is the option of choice itself formidable? Were we simply trying to kill our waiting time meaningfully and decide between two things that can’t be compared?
Our hearts are always steeped in discord, and the outer world has little access to them. We engineer an aura to project the inner to the world about our beliefs, feelings, awareness, etc. All the while focused and obsessed with winning for our explanations. Most encounters, however, in life are not zero-sum games. Yes, there are winners, often with a bigger prized slice, but everyone is a mere participant in the grand scheme for an extraordinarily brief period. All deeds and misdeeds—a fallacy of choices—must settle into equilibrium at some point. Energies are always conserved in the way nature operates.