Does Free will really exist?

Sometimes when I’m trying to talk about the existence of free will, I notice something interesting.

Before we even define what free will is, people often react to the question itself. There’s curiosity, sometimes resistance, sometimes a kind of inner tightening. I understand that. The idea of free will touches something very intimate. It touches who we think we are, how we understand responsibility, guilt, merit, and control.

So rather than starting with conclusions, I prefer to slow down and look at how this question actually lands in lived experience. People react before they even know why. There’s curiosity, there’s resistance, there’s often a tightening inside. That alone already tells me that we’re touching something central. So before even mentioning bigger ideas or concepts, I want to stay right here and ask something very simple: what do we actually mean when we say we have free will?

When people are faced with the question, “Do we really have free will?”, fear often comes before understanding. There can be this immediate sense that if the answer were no, something essential would collapse. As if we would become like animals, rocks, or objects in the world. As if we would no longer really matter. As if our efforts would lose their value, our individuality would fade, and any sense of superiority or specialness would disappear.

Along with that, there is often the fear of having no control at all. And most humans deeply dislike the idea of not being in control. Control feels like safety, like orientation, like proof that we exist as someone who matters. So when that sense is threatened, the reaction can be strong. It can feel like a loss of self-importance, and that is a hard pill to swallow.

That reaction alone already tells me how deeply the idea of free will is tied to the ego — to our need for control, meaning, and authorship. I want to be clear about something, though. I’m not interested in denying action, and I’m not interested in denying responsibility. What I’m interested in is looking closely, and honestly, at how choice actually happens in lived experience.

This understanding didn’t come from theory for me. It came from watching my own life closely, from noticing how things actually move and unfold rather than how we’re told they should. If I’m honest, I didn’t choose to be here in the way we usually mean choosing.

I didn’t choose my parents. I didn’t choose my body or my temperament. I didn’t choose the country I was born into, the emotional atmosphere of my home, or the beliefs that were floating around when I was little. I didn’t choose the fears and hopes of the people who raised me.

Even before I had words, my nervous system was already forming. It was already responding to what surrounded it. My way of feeling the world was taking shape long before there was any clear sense of “me” as someone who could decide things. And then life went on.

I didn’t choose my ancestors or what they went through. I didn’t choose what they passed down through their bodies and stories. I didn’t choose what felt familiar to me and what didn’t. I didn’t choose the questions that started living inside me.

Even my interest in spirituality, meaning, and understanding didn’t feel like a personal achievement. It felt like something that was already there, something that grew because the conditions around me allowed it to grow. Other people can grow up in the same culture or religion and feel nothing like that connection at all, and I can’t honestly say it’s because they chose differently. It’s because something else was moving through them.

So when people talk about free will, I understand why. From the inside, it really feels like we decide. I feel myself choosing what to say, what to write, what to do next. That feeling is very convincing. It gives a sense of authorship, of control, of being someone who stands outside life and directs it.

I’m not denying that experience. I’m just interested in looking one step deeper, at how that sense of choosing actually forms. When I slow down and look carefully, I don’t see myself creating the will itself. What I see are impulses, tendencies, desires, fears, and interests appearing.

All those interests didn’t arrive because I consciously chose them. They showed up. Curiosity moved in a certain direction before I had any say in it. Even science points in this direction. Neuroscience has observed that thoughts and decisions begin forming in the brain before we’re consciously aware of them. By the time I say, “I chose this,” something has already started moving. Choice arrives, but it arrives after the impulse.

And when I look more honestly, I see that even my resistance wasn’t chosen. My hesitation, my doubt, my avoidance — those also arose on their own. Resistance appeared, and then action followed from that resistance, just like desire showed up and expressed itself.

There’s a phrase that stayed with me because it describes exactly what I was already observing in myself: “I can do what I will, but I cannot will what I will.” Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that, and when I first read it, it didn’t feel abstract. It felt like someone quietly naming something obvious.

I can choose between actions. I can act on a desire. But I don’t choose which desire appears. I don’t sit there deciding which wants I will have. They arrive, and then I respond.

Once attention turns toward observing what arises, rather than assuming authorship, something very simple becomes clear. I can watch thoughts appear. I can notice preferences forming. I can see urges, resistances, and impulses arise on their own. And when I really look, I don’t find a moment where I chose for any of that to appear. It was already there.

Movement happens. Responses happen. Words are said. Actions unfold. The difficulty is not that nothing happens. The difficulty is realizing that what happens is already responding to something that appeared before I was “there” to choose it.

This is the part that can feel threatening. Because if I’m not the one authoring what arises, then who am I? Where does my identity sit? What happens to the sense of being someone in control? That’s where the struggle lives — not in the fact that life moves, but in the realization that life is already moving before I take ownership of it.

Long before Schopenhauer put words to it, Spinoza was already pointing in the same direction. He observed that people believe themselves to be free because they are conscious of their desires, but unaware of the causes that determine them. Different language, different time, the same insight. Awareness comes after causation, not before it.

This is where the question of free will becomes very precise for me. It’s not about whether we act or not. Clearly we do. It’s about authorship. When I look carefully, I don’t find a moment where I sit outside my experience and freely decide which desire will arise. I find desires appearing, interests forming, fears activating, and then choices following.

In that sense, we can act, but we don’t author the will in the way we like to believe. Seeing this changes how I relate to responsibility. I know this is often where people get uncomfortable, because it can sound like excusing everything, but that’s not how it lands for me.

When I see causes more clearly, I don’t care less about harm — I care more. I just stop reducing everything to blame and moral superiority. Understanding causes doesn’t erase responsibility; it changes it. Responsibility becomes functional instead of moralistic.

We still protect. We still intervene. We still say no to harm. We just do it without the illusion that people appear out of nowhere, fully formed, freely authoring every outcome.

This way of seeing also changes my relationship with effort. We’re taught that effort is everything: push harder, try more, fix yourself. And effort does have its place. But what I started to notice was how much suffering came from effort that fights what’s already happening.

When stress is here and I add, “I shouldn’t feel this,” suffering doubles. When I simply notice, “This is here right now,” something softens. The traffic doesn’t disappear. The emotion doesn’t vanish. But the extra layer of struggle drops.

That’s what I mean by non-effort. Not passivity. Not avoidance. Just the end of the inner fight.

And slowly, naturally, this understanding opens into something else. Life no longer needs to be managed in the same way. Experience can unfold without being constantly corrected.

Fear arises, and I notice it. Sadness arises, and I let it be felt. Even resistance itself is allowed. Less suffering doesn’t mean no pain — it means less added struggle.

What also becomes clear is how deeply humanity has believed itself to be superior because of thinking. We took the thinking mind as proof that we stand above the rest of existence, and paradoxically, we became enslaved by it.

When authorship softens, another intelligence becomes visible. The heart beats. The body heals. Insights arrive. Life organizes itself. Humans are not outside that flow. And in letting go of control, more intelligence becomes available, not less.

Over time, a quiet trust appears. Not belief. Not optimism. Just trust born from seeing how much suffering comes from control.

I also understand why not everyone resonates with this. People meet ideas when they’re ready. Writing like this is not about controlling who understands; it’s an act of alignment.

There’s also a very simple, everyday example that makes this clearer for me. A situation appears in my life — something unexpected, something that asks for a response. I didn’t choose the situation. Then, almost immediately, a thought comes telling me what I could do. That thought arrived before I was even aware of it. Then maybe an emotion follows — doubt, fear, hesitation. I didn’t choose that emotion either. It arose, shaped by my past, how I was raised, what feels familiar or unsafe to my nervous system. Then another thought comes in response to that emotion. I start comparing, weighing options, doubting. From the inside, it feels like I’m analyzing and choosing. But when I look closely, I see that the situation, the first thought, the emotion, the doubt, and even the so-called analysis all appeared by themselves.

I didn’t choose the situation. I didn’t choose the fear. I didn’t choose the doubt. I didn’t choose the thought that suggested what to do. They all moved through me. The sense of choice came afterward, giving the illusion that I was the author of the whole process.

And I understand that even writing this wasn’t really my choice in the old sense. It came when it came. The desire to write appeared. The ideas arrived. I felt them moving, organizing themselves, asking to be expressed. I followed that movement. I wrote. And now it’s here.

For me. For someone else. Or maybe for no one. And I feel grateful. Organized. Quietly happy. That doesn’t feel wrong. It feels honest.

Living like this — in flow rather than control — feels profound and beautiful to me. This is how I intend to live as much as I can.

I’m not offering conclusions. I’m sharing how things appear to me now. If anything here resonates, you can look for yourself.

And maybe let the question stay open:

Does free will really exist?

By Katiana