Free Will

 

He was hesitating. Could he possibly follow the same path he’d followed until then? Yes, from here outside, from where we’d met, we could say yes, but it should equally be said that this didn’t mean ‘no’ wasn’t also the only possibility. In his condition, he wouldn’t go very far. He’d been walking in circles, circles with an ever-shrinking radius, all of them however drawn from the same center, the same impulse. Nevertheless, all directions he’d had a glimpse of from that point seemed to come from what he’d lived until then. Nothing would change. He’d remain the same. Suffice to watch those who’d come before him to erase all trace of doubt. Looking back, he noticed that what was deep and meaningful in himself hadn’t really changed, but transformed. Immutable at the center. He’d never felt things that way until he’d come up to that door. Not that he had pondered them, he’d felt them, and that feeling had revealed a truth. He was now a man in possession of his own truth, the key to his destiny. How had he wandered and waited until it was delivered to him. Not The Truth, of course, Absolute and impersonal. Just his truth, and that was enough for the moment, given he was alone. As he stood in front of that door, he was hesitating. Going through it would be something new. Not like staying out there, where, for better or worse, he could always at least see the people around him. He was alone and scared of what might follow. He could scarcely see, at most his intuition could give him a hunch on what was ahead, and he knew that somehow from that point on it was intuition and not reason, as he was used to, that would guide his steps. He’d lose reason, and that changed everything. It would become something unique, impossible to imitate. Some would say that entering or not was a matter of free will, but he felt as if there wasn’t another thing to do. Key in hand, free will was for him just as real as anyone with him now, and there was nobody there in that moment other than his memories, illusions. This was free will, then: an illusion. With courage coming from the conviction that he couldn’t have acted any differently, he came in and the door closed itself behind him. What served as an entrance for him now couldn’t be of any good to anybody else. It was his, and only for him and to him would it open. Never again would that repeat itself. Nobody would enter, nobody would leave. He himself wouldn’t be able to leave. Isn’t that how it goes with the life of every man? He would continue to be himself, but he was already transformed. He couldn’t go back, and even if he could, nothing would be changed in what he’d been transformed. There was no other choice. There never was one for those outside not living a life but their own. For him, free will had to be left outside.