Where There'S A Will, There'S A Way Definition & Meaning

How to lớn muster the will you need to find your way

Posted September 18, 2013

The old English proverb asserts itself with complete assurance: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” like many time-worn sayings, this claim that mind always rules over matter rings true only some of the time. Sometimes we don’t have the will; sometimes we thảm bại our way. What should we do then?

Etta James, the best blues singer ever, knew more than most people about not having the will & losing her way. Born to lớn a 14-year-old mother who wasn’t interested in children & a father who had long since disappeared, she once described her childhood as a series of one-night stands: she was continually passed from one relative khổng lồ another. As an adult, she abused her body almost constantly. The men in her life—managers, singers, và family members alike—frequently took advantage of her: musically, financially, & sexually. After a withering battle with heroin addiction, Etta launched a comeback with an album titled “The Seven Year Itch.” The most telling tuy nhiên on the album captures the nguồn of her fierce spirit và the aimlessness of her fragile soul. In “I Got The Will,” she recalls that her mama told her the old saying—that if there’s a will, there’s got lớn be a way. Etta found otherwise: “I got the will but I can’t find my way now.”

As Etta says, sometimes in life we have the will, but we can’t find the way. At other times, presumably, we know the way, but we can’t seem khổng lồ muster the will. In either case, getting from wherever we are to lớn some place better is our biggest challenge in life. How vì chưng we get from here to there? How vì chưng we find both the will & the way?

At the start of each New Year, the literary agent John Brockman poses a provocative question khổng lồ more than a hundred leading scientists & science writers, & asks them lớn respond. Brockman posts the results on his website, edge.org. In years past, he has asked: What bởi vì you believe is true even though you cannot prove it? What have you changed your mind about? What is your dangerous idea?

Last year, Brockman asked: What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation? In other words, what deep puzzle in the universe or in human life has been unexpectedly solved by applying a simple & elegant principle?

The answers include some principles you would expect, such as relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Other responses seem almost too obvious khổng lồ qualify. For example, everything is the way it is because it got that way. Oh, really? My dad—who’s not a scientist—would sometimes give a similar answer to lớn my incessant questions about why this or why that. He’d say, “Just because.”

The most useful of last year’s crop of answers came from Richard Thaler, a professor of behavioral economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and co-author of the recent book Nudge. What’s his deep, elegant & beautiful explanation? Commitment. He says, “It is a fundamental principle of economics that a person is always better off if they have more alternatives to lớn choose from. But this principle is wrong. There are cases when I can make myself better off by restricting my future choices and committing myself lớn a specific course of action.”

Thaler explains that the idea of commitment as a strategy is an ancient one. “Odysseus famously had his crew tie him to lớn the mast so he could listen lớn the Sirens’ songs without falling into the temptation lớn steer the ship into the rocks. & he committed his crew to not listening by filling their ears with wax. Another classic is Cortez’s decision to burn his ships upon arriving in South America, thereby removing retreat as an option his crew could consider.”

Thaler’s insight is that an exercise of will involves committing ourselves to one course of kích hoạt and—this may be the hardest part—setting aside all other possible courses of action. As 20th-century American poet Theodore Roethke says in the title poem from his Pulitzer Prize-winning volume The Waking, “I learn by going where I have khổng lồ go.” If you have the will khổng lồ commit yourself, you can find your way in life.

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When you’re singing the blues about what to do & how to vị it, remember Etta James. She sang more truth than perhaps she realized. She may have said in her tuy vậy that she didn’t know the way, but she knew all along that she had the will—and eventually discovered in her life that she did know the way. But she had to make a decision about which way lớn choose, which required her khổng lồ set aside other options. Khổng lồ have the power is eventually to see the path. We learn by going where we have to go.

So get going. Ask yourself where in your life you need lớn stop waffling & make a commitment. Ask yourself where you need khổng lồ start going and make progress. Things will get done in your life because you make a commitment to vày them. You learn by going where you have khổng lồ go. Explanations don’t get any more elegant than this.

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Galen Guengerich, Ph.D., is a senior minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in Manhattan & the tác giả of the book God Revised: How Religion Must Evolve in a Scientific Age.