«The whole point of this country is if you want to eat garbage, balloon up to 600 pounds and die of a heart attack at 43, you can! You are free to do so. To me, that’s beautiful.»
Ron Swanson in “Parks & Recreation”
There is a beautiful xkcd comic I was reminded of recently:
And I wonder — do you realize you are free? That you can decide for yourself? What you want? What you like?
And yeah, that freedom can become … a problem. To quote Pratchett:
Who knew what evil lurked in the hearts of men? A copper, that’s who. After ten years you thought you’d seen, it all, but the shadows always dished up more. You saw how close men lived to the beast. You realized that people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibly sane. They were simply men without a shield. They’d looked at the world and realized that all the rules didn’t have to apply to them, not if they didn’t want them to. They weren’t fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with the beast.
«Night Watch» by Terry Pratchett
But few if any people go that far. But yeah, stop for a moment, ask yourself if what you are doing is really what you yourself want to do.