Think of it as Yoga for the brain, we are going to stretch a bit.
Do we have free will? Maybe.
Do we have a choice about choosing?
Not a chance.”
Do we have free will?… Either way we have no choice. --YNOT
Free will is one of those questions folks like to chase in circles, the way a dog chases its tail—looks mighty philosophical until you realize nobody’s getting anywhere. Some say every step we take was written long before our boots hit the ground. Others swear we’re the captains of our own souls, steering life with a hand as steady as a preacher on Sunday. But here’s the joke the universe plays on both camps: whether your choices are real or just part of the script, you still have to make them. Life drags you to the fork in the road and stands there tapping its foot. If you don’t choose left or right, time will shove you down one anyway. So free will or fate, it doesn’t matter much—either way, you’ve got no choice in the matter.
📘 The Parable of the Man Who Tried Not to Choose
A Humorous Philosophical Tale About Free Will, Fate, and the Trouble of Being Alive
There was once a man named Eli Pickens who woke up one morning determined to never make another decision again.
He had read somewhere—probably on the back of a cereal box—that life was nothing but a long string of choices, and he decided (which, if you’re keeping score, was his first mistake) that he was done with the whole business.
So Eli sat down on his front porch, folded his arms, and declared to the universe:
“From now on, I refuse to choose.”
The universe, which has a bad habit of taking things personally, decided to test him.
A gust of wind blew his hat into the street.
Eli stared at it.
Should he go get it, or let it go?
He refused to choose.
So a passing goat—nobody knew who owned it, or if anybody truly owns a goat—wandered over, sniffed the hat, and ate it whole.
Eli frowned. “Well, that settles that,” he said, as if this were the outcome he wanted all along.
A few minutes later, the sun shifted, and his porch left him half in shade, half in blinding Florida heat.
Should he move his chair?
He refused to choose.
So he sat there sweating like a sinner in church, still proud of himself for sticking to his plan.
Then hunger set in.
Should he make breakfast?
He refused.
So hunger made a choice for him—he passed out and woke up on the porch floor, his neighbor fanning him with a newspaper and asking what in God’s name he was doing.
By now Eli was getting frustrated.
Life, he realized, was sneaky.
Every time he didn’t choose, something else chose on his behalf—gravity, goats, neighbors, the wind, hunger, the sun—each one pushing him one step further than he planned to go.
It was maddening.
Finally he threw up his hands and shouted at the sky:
“Fine! I’ll choose something!”
At that exact moment, a bird flying overhead chose to relieve itself—right onto Eli’s forehead.
The neighbor laughed so hard she nearly dropped the newspaper.
Eli wiped his face, sighed, and said:
“All right, Universe, you win.
If I choose, something happens.
If I refuse to choose, something still happens.
Either way, I have no choice at all.”
And from that day forward, Eli became a philosopher—mostly because everyone agreed he clearly wasn’t suited for anything practical.
Sometimes people would ask him:
“Eli, do you believe in free will or fate?”
And he’d grin and reply:
“Doesn’t matter.
Life pushes you ahead like a stubborn mule, and whether you pull the reins or drop them, that mule’s still taking you somewhere.
So do we have free will?… Either way we have no choice.”
It’s a philosophical joke and a paradox rolled into one.
1. If we don’t have free will…
Then everything we think, choose, or do is already determined — by biology, fate, physics, God, randomness, whatever.
So we literally have no choice.
2. If we do have free will…
Then we’re choosing to wonder whether we have free will.
But the second half of the sentence says: “Either way we have no choice.”
Which implies that even the act of choosing to believe in free will is something we can’t escape — we are forced to make choices because life puts choices in front of us.
In other words, even if free will exists, we are compelled to choose.
You can’t opt out of choosing.
Choosing not to choose is still a choice.
So the statement collapses both sides into the same outcome:
If free will is fake → we have no choice.
If free will is real → we have no choice but to exercise it.
No matter which side you pick, you end up stuck with “no choice.”
The deeper point
It’s a commentary on the human condition:
We are forced by existence to act.
We are forced to decide.
We are forced to move through time.
We are forced to live with consequences.
Even the philosophical debate about free will traps you in the act of choosing a side.
So the statement is both funny and existential:
You can’t escape choosing — whether your choosing is real or predetermined.
