Do we really know who we are and what our role is in the world?
eventually most of us figure out what our roles are in the world, individually and as a community. it's how we choose jobs and make career changes, discover our personalities, and learn to function together. we all get to the point sometimes where we're lost, typically as teens when we haven't really discovered ourselves enough yet to feel a sense of identity. but i don't think the same roles always stick. we're ever-changing people with ever-changing lives.
in the movie, harold pretty much knows who he is, especially after having it dictated out to him by his narrator. his job: just average joe that works the same job, has the same routine, and deals with the same people. every day. but then he discovers that maybe his role isn't as permanent as he thought. all it took was stepping outside his mundane world and into something new and unexpected, to live.
How can we know if we really are making the choice?
there really is no way to truly know. that's the whole basis behind the argument of fate vs. free will. all you can do is just keep doing what you're doing and not spend your whole life questioning the concepts. it's not necessarily a waste of time to question them and look into the subject, but at the same time it's a little ironic that people spend all their time researching how to live.
as i'd said before, the most important thing for you to do is live. living and learning are the basis of life. harold spent a while researching and trying to figure out what his fate was and how to change it, but at the same time he figured the same thing as mentioned before: that you can't waste your whole life researching it. and he finally lived for once, going to the extreme (extreme for him, at least). and i think that for once, he didn't worry about his impending death or the author looming above his life, and his ignorance of it seemed to equal bliss.
