September 8
The tyrant threatens: I will chain you. — My foot you will chain. — I will behead you. — When did I ever claim that my head could not be cut off? My will, though, you do not conquer.
Discourses I,19 (freely rendered)
Listening mode
The tyrant threatens: I will chain you. — My foot you will chain. — I will behead you. — When did I ever claim that my head could not be cut off? My will, though, you do not conquer.
When someone pushes you into something you think is wrong, the situation is clear at first. You do it because you have little choice, and you know you don't want to. That is unpleasant, but easy to see.
It gets harder afterwards. A coercion you recognise as coercion is hard to bear. With every thought it reminds you that you gave in. So you start finding reasons. Perhaps the thing wasn't so wrong after all. Perhaps you would have done it that way anyway. After a while your giving in sounds like a decision of your own.
No one broke your will in all this. You reset it yourself, to spare yourself the feeling of powerlessness. That is understandable, and sometimes you do come across good reasons along the way. Only, afterwards it is hard to tell which ones you found and which ones you needed.
More uncomfortable is the sentence: "I did it, but I didn't think it was right." It lets the defeat stand. But in it, the no still belongs to you.
