spiritually speaking... re choices and free will?

I agree with David that there are some things that can prevent you from doing something. Like I stopped at 5'1" when I was 14, so it's highly unlikely that I could become a great basketball player.

But everything else is a matter largely of what you interpret your life to be and how much effort you put into it. For instance, you can decide to drop out of school when you are fifteen. That will narrow your occupational choices to just a few. I know there are high school dropouts who later become millionaires, but 99% of them never rise out of the lower class income bracket. Low income also restricts your choices. However, if you decide you WANT to live that way, then you will be happy with the results. Whatever choices you make that affect your life, it's your interpretation of the results that determines whether you have a good life or a bad life.

Who is knowledgeable sufficiently, to truly say?

In my case I have lived the life that my parents have decided would be the most protective of my personality.

What they don't realize and I don't want to hurt them by telling them with such vehemence as has accumulated in me, is that I have allowed myself to be crippled. And I wish that as early as 3 when I wanted to become a ballerina and danced to my own shadow by the light the moon cast on the porch' wall - totally entranced - by something I could not see, but completely understood, THAT they had stopped me and broken the spell that now holds me as an insect in a spider's web.

I never imagined that by nearly 30, NOW, that I'd become a recluse, and so involved in the arts that they are my second nature. I can not even remember the first.

I am not unhappy to work arduously at my art, but I long to be with people as well...and I don't mean in some endless party, or any activity which would be an avoidance to life. But to help! To be of productive, constructive effort! This my parents do not understand, because they think all my life I have remained unprepared.

I am not unprepared. I am tired though..or is it more fatigued of arguing with them?

I don't know.

Perhaps I never should have danced so well and convincingly when I was 3 to the view of all..perhaps I should have danced in the pitch-dark

and not entranced by the moonlight. No audience would have been attracted which would then protect you for the remainder of a Life-Time!

Knowledge is freedom and free will. If you know you have choices then you can choose - that is obvious.

However often we know an option may be available, we know about it but not how to get it. This is still not free will.

It is when we learn that we have or can have the skills to achieve then we have free will

What tools can help - life coaching and NLP to name but two.

An example:

you talk about elevator, in the UK we call them lifts. Some people have a phobia or lifts. It is a form of claustrophobia. It can greatily restricked a persons life. There is now so many phobia cures that no one need suffer. However if you do not know that - your life is crippled by the lack of knowledge

There has to be one major decision in life first; that is whether or not you will serve and commit your life to God.After that if you decided to fo,llow Him, then all your little or bigger decisions will be governed by the princilpes and guidelines of THAT decision, because it determines your values and purpose in life, Even the small decisions, like the ones you suggested:

1) What to wear - will be governed bu your sense of morality and self worth (a bum or an upstanding MAN; or a slutty tramp, or a virtuous woman.

2) You will address the proper values of food and diet as laid out in the Word of God, or eat junk, guzzle beer, and clog your arteries with fat.

3) The Word will teach you the value of personal health and well being and your initial decision to follow Christ will inspire you to "take the stairs," so to speak.

Both, I would say.

I like the sentiment, but it's not really true. You can't be, say, a major league ballplayer just by deciding to.

I agree 100%.