Is "Choose Life" Really A Choice?

Deut: 30:19: “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your seed may live.”

It’s your birthday, and I’m giving you two presents. One of them is horrible; something no one would want. So I’m telling you to pick the other one! But why then did I put two down in the first place – why not just give the nice one? Isn’t that a kind of unpleasant mind game? And what if you want the horrible one, will I give it to you?

And seriously: what is the point of giving someone a choice and then commanding them to pick only one, thereby removing that choice?

But is it indeed a commandment, or just a strong recommendation? That’s the difficulty in the Torah, that some things that are worded so they sound like commands are not actually so, e.g. “six days you shall work and on the seventh day is for rest” (I did hear one opinion that this is in fact a mitzvah to work!).

I hear in our verse not a command, but a heartfelt request and strong encouragement. We are allowed to choose the path of life or the path of death, that is how the world is structured. The way I hear G-d’s voice is—so to speak—imploring us, saying:

I have put terrible things into the world I have created. Enough of them that you can choose to focus on them all day every day, and become suffused with feelings of anger, disgust, and despair. I will not take away your free will; you get to decide where to put your eyes. But please, for the sake of this grand experiment I have called Life, please make dozens of tiny choices every day and every week to look at the good. ‘For this thing is very near to you, in your mouth, and in your heart, that you may do it.’” (Deut: 30:14)

Something in human nature pulls us constantly into the negative. I find that the only way to remain in the positive place, the “choosing life” place, is to constantly make endless small good choices.
Rambam (Hilchot Teshuva 3:4) notes we should behold ourselves as evenly balanced between innocence and guilt, and see the entire world similarly…. “if he performs one good deed, behold, he will overbalance himself and the whole world to the side of virtue, and bring about his own and their salvation and escape..." Every time we choose the good, we tip the scales, we move into the realm of good, we face the right direction. And we will receive help to keep going there. As the Sages say, “The way in which a person wishes to go, they are led.”

Once a year, we read these words “Choose Life”. But we should really hear them every day, every hour and every moment.