What is the very best that can be said or done with the materials at your disposal? Be it what it may, you have the power to say it or do it; let there be no pretence that you are not a free agent.
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book Ten
As usual, MA hits it dead center. Yes, on the one hand this is a "duh" moment, but only for some people. I don't know if I'm ready to go as far as T.E. Lawrence, at least as far as the cinematic Lawrence of Arabia, and propose that nothing is written (you've probably figured out that I'm headed back to Jordan, three times in 2022 - but also, inshallah, a solo trip this coming Thanksgiving). We may not have the complete control that we think we have, but I also struggle tremendously with the idea that everything we're going to say or do has been predetermined by some grouchy, anthropomorphic know-it-all divine force/farce. MA is right, we are free agents, and isn't that the key? None of this could ever make any sense, have any meaning, if we don't have the freedom to choose, even if we routinely, almost by definition, make the wrong choice?
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