The Giver Reflection: Would you want your future to be decided by others ? Why or Why not?

The Giver by Lois Lowry displays a perfect community, or an Utopian society: A place ideal for perfection. The rules in the community are strict, everything is orderly and the community is very predictable. The citizens futures are chosen for them. When picked up the novel for the first time and started reading, my initial reaction was, wow, depressing much? I thought this because every single thing was controlled. This prompt: Would you want your future to be decided by others ? Why or Why not? stood out to me and got my thinking, thats why I chose it.

I think that it depends. In life you either want to decide or don't. Sometimes you don't have the power to decide, like Jonas. In all honesty, life isn't easy. Life isn't served to you on a silver platter. Nor is kicked to you. Life is like a cave. Caves can have multiple paths sometimes. When life does this, you can either guess, decide, or let someone chose for you. Whichever one happens you will follow that cave path you have chosen. It dosen't matter what path you choose, there will be consequences, whether they are good or bad.

No. I wouldn't like to have my future decide. Why? Life is about learning. It doesn't matter if you learn from your mistakes or from others, you learn something new everyday. Life is also about making decisions. Without us making our own decisions we could never learn and we would have to follow others commands. Everyone in The Giver has their jobs assigned to them by the Elder. These are a few examples of how jobs are chosen. If you are gentle and kind then you are either a Nurturer or the Director of the House of Old. If you are imaginative then you are an architect. I think that if learning and decision making were taken away from life then the life as we know it will become dull, grey and lifeless.