There’s no freedom in having to do something but you’re also not free to choose your wants.
Maybe it’s better to just live and let life happen instead of thinking about what could’ve been. What ever happened is the only thing that could’ve happened.
It still was your choice, people regularly go against the societal norms and desires imposed from the outside. Like, I never started smoking, although both of my parents and a lot of my peers did.
No, I disagree. I didn’t choose not to start smoking. I simply never developed the desire to start. It’s not something I decided against my natural preferences.
It’s besides the point anyway. Even if I could choose to do or not do something it would still be about what I want which aligns with the title of the post.
You can’t do something you don’t want unless someone makes you do it. Even if you do something like go to the gym despite not wanting there’s a greater want behind it that’s pushing you to do it. In this case getting healthy and fit. This means you do want to go to the gym, you just don’t like it.
The point was to illustrate a counter-example to your coffee example and that you can control (at least some) of your wants (which you previously said that one can’t do). I would be curious to hear your definition of want (and have to, for that matter). You seem to be using it as an umbrella term that covers everything from physical urges to something a person thinks would subjectively benefit them.
By have to I mean obligations. You’ve got a meeting at noon, you have to be there. You may not want to, but you have to.
By want I mean every other voluntary action. You’re thirsty and you open the fridge. There’s milk, water and orange juice. Say you grab the orange juice. You did that because you wanted it. To say that you could have chosen milk or water isn’t true. You didn’t want those, you wanted orange juice. If you rewind the clock and open the fridge again you’d still want the orange juice. In that moment you can’t do other than what you want. You can’t choose to not want it. It may be than in a few years you no longer like orange juice so in thay sense your wants may change but then and there in that moment you can’t act against it.
Even if you decide against your preferences to prove a point you’d still be acting according to your wants; you want to prove me wrong and thus you grab the water. That’s still doing what you wanted to do.
