"Anarchy doesn't mean no rules, it means no rulers."

For me, sovereignty means owning my choices—no excuses, no blame. It’s the quiet strength of knowing I’m responsible for how I live, and that freedom begins with accountability.

Responsibility and sovereignty are different things. Nonetheless ...

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

-- Tennessee Williams

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

-- Ernest Hemingway

Freedom is something that dies unless it's used.

-- Hunter S. Thompson

He who conquers others is strong. He who conquers himself is mighty.

-- Lao Tzu

One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.

-- Sigmund Freud

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.

-- Rabindranath Tagore

Fate leads the willing, and drags along the reluctant.

-- Seneca

The best way out is always through.

-- Robert Frost

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.

-- Seneca

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

-- Horace

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.

-- James Russell Lowell

I don't have any quick quips but in the spirit of the question i came did come to a related insight about a year ago about personal autonomy.

The story starts with a teenage Catholic boy on the eve of his confirmation. Recognizing his doubts, he floats the idea to his family of not partaking, and is told - in terms far more certain than his wavering protests - that this is not an option. And even if it were an option (which it's not!) there were be severe consequences for non-compliance in this life, not just the next.

He acquiesces. After all he thinks: how's he being really being harmed anyways? All pain and no gain to follow through with the intuition. Soon after the whole episode is forgotten under more colorful memories of pretty girls, idiots bosses, moving into and out of apartments, growing older and watching the country tear itself apart on TV. The family who were so hel...heaven-bent on the gesture have forgotten too.

The year is now 2021, and under strained patience, a mandate has been made to take the vaccine. The equivalent dilemma presents itself with its equivalent threats and condemnations.

(To be continued...)

It is not important what you think, but how you think.

My life, my ways

"I'm the captain now!"