When you don’t give yourself the chance to animate what’s meaningful for you, you set yourself up for a death-by-papercut life in which you never get to be your real self in the world. You never get to be free. You feel as if you’re living behind glass, as if you can only be yourself in private. It doesn’t feel awful every day, that’s the most dangerous part. Experiencing freedom on a technicality feels familiar, routine. You can live your whole life that way, politely being less. Pretending you’re not powerful and calling that modesty.
