Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

To be alive and to be free are different things, and the second is what makes the first feel like yours. A life arranged entirely by other people can look intact from outside and still be hollow to the person inside it, which is why constraint wears down people who cannot quite name what is wrong.

Most of us are not imprisoned but are hemmed in somewhere: a job, an obligation, a habit of agreeing. Find one place where a small amount of choice could be reclaimed, and reclaim it. The size of the freedom matters less than the fact of exercising it.