I hadn’t heard this word since Bobby Brown sang about it in 1988 (I hear that Brittany Spears did a version more recently, but it’s always hard to top the original). I was listening to a book, there it was and all I could hear was Bobby Brown singing “My Prerogative”. Prerogative is about a person’s right, a person’s privilege and the power you have to decide. It also speaks of “a distinctive excellence” according to Merriam- Webster and it made me think about the things which we actually have control over. The original term has to do with voting in the Roman Senate, but I am not talking about the things for which you have a vote, rather I am talking about the things which are truly yours to decide.
On my most cynical of days I am not sure this includes anything, because even decisions about the furnishings of ones own home (which was the subject mentioned in the book I was listening too) while yours to make are dictated by both your means and the space. Then there are times when you make a decision and you are sure about it, but it can’t happen right now for any number of reasons. I suppose that doesn’t change your prerogative in making the decision, but is does steal some of your thunder in its implementation. Luckily for me, though I can be quite cynical, I am in general an optimist and I believe that we actually have much more power to choose in this life than we usually think we do. There are the little everyday choices like how we dress, what we eat (I have no problem with picky eaters, you may as well enjoy what you eat), and for the most part how we fill our time (yes there are things we “must do,” but we have some control there as well) and I think you do establish your own, “distinctive excellence,” your own prerogative in these things. You also have slightly bigger choices and for the most part control over what to be, how to live, and who to be with. You can talk all you want about fate, and it is there, I believe we are placed in certain situations and we meet certain people for a reason, but you still have to take the opportunities that are placed in front of you; you make a choice. Like I said before though, you can make an argument about all the external factors involved and reduce these choices to a kind of limited prerogative, but it’s still yours.
Perhaps the one thing that we truly have power over though and which is for me most important to us, is our mind. We choose what we think. We may be influenced by any number of things, from our families, to our education, to the situation at hand, but it is still our choice. No one can make our mind up for us unless we choose to let them. No one can make us feel bad or sad or happy unless we let them. No one can take away our hope unless we let them. In some ways prerogative has the connotation of being the thing which we take control of, not which we are given control of. When we decide that we will be in control of our own fate, our own decisions, when we decide to own what is distinctive and excellent for ourselves and about ourselves; that is our prerogative. When we say (to quote Bobby Brown), “I don’t need permission, make my own decisions, that’s the way I want to live. I can do just what I feel. No one can tell me what to do. That’s my prerogative.”
If we have no prerogative we have no self and we simply let the world dictate everything for us. We need to take control sometimes. We need prerogative.
Tripping the Light Fantastic 