Post 54 – The Paradox of Action: If Nothing Can Be Otherwise, Why Do We Strive?

The Question

If we are a will, but our will is also our being and there is no becoming; if life unfolds as it is and not as a contingency subject to alternative options, then what is the use of trying to steer it one way or the other? If necessity determines all, what role does action play? Does effort have meaning, or is it an illusion?

The Unfolding of Necessity

From the perspective of the Structure of Being, what we call choice, effort, or striving is not an attempt to alter necessity but is itself the appearing of necessity. We are not separate from Being, navigating an open field of possibilities. Rather, what we experience as our will is the necessary unfolding of a particular determination of Being.

It is only from the assumption of contingency that one believes in a multiplicity of real options. The perspective that sees life as an open decision-making process is one conditioned by the illusion of becoming. In truth, what we call “our choices” are not acts of altering the necessary but are the very mode through which necessity reveals itself.

Action as an Expression of Being

This realization does not render action meaningless. On the contrary, it liberates action from the burden of imagined alternatives. One does not act to escape necessity but because action is the necessary appearing of Being itself. When seen clearly, effort is not a struggle against an indifferent fate but the direct participation in the structure of reality.

Even the act of questioning this, of seeking to understand, of desiring alignment with truth—these too are necessary unfoldings. They are not separate from the eternal order but are its manifestations. Thus, striving is not an error but a mode through which Being appears.

The Clarity of Necessity

The difference lies in perspective. Within the illusion of contingency, one acts with anxiety, believing that one path might be better than another. Within the recognition of necessity, one acts with clarity, understanding that every step, every thought, every effort is already the appearing of what must be. Life is not a problem to be solved but the inevitable revelation of what eternally is.