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Free Will

The Will Is Not Free: You Have To Earn It

Basil Gala on what it takes to free ourselves from our formative factors.

“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”

The poet William Ernest Henley, one-legged, frequently sick with tuberculosis, wrote: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” It was a striking assertion of free will.

Habits and addictions seem to bind up us and people around us, inevitably controlling our acts, keeping us prisoners, unable to escape our innate character or environmental influences. Jim was a talented handyman who worked for my brother and me on our buildings a few years back.

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