February 2
I call free that which exists and acts solely from the necessity of its own nature. Not the one who flees order is free, but the one who understands it.
Ethics (freely rendered)
Listening mode
I call free that which exists and acts solely from the necessity of its own nature. Not the one who flees order is free, but the one who understands it.
Someone who knows you well predicts how you will decide. They are right, and it annoys you more than it should. For a moment the prediction feels like a fence: if others already know what you will do, there seems to be little room left.
The obvious thing would be to choose differently next time, just to test the fence. But then the prediction would have steered you all the more, only in the opposite direction. Contradiction, too, hangs on what it is directed against.
Something else happens when you look more closely at the expected decision. Perhaps you find in it a reason you share, a preference older than this conversation and one you don't want to give up. Then your choice stays as predictable as before. Only it no longer comes out of you like a reflex, but like an answer.
Sometimes, though, all you find in it is habit. That is less comfortable. It can't be affirmed like a reason, nor shaken off with a defiant countermove.
Next time the other person will probably be right again. It's just that by then you may know better than they do why.
