Quotes: Choosing - and being allowed to choose - your own direction

Men on individuality

When I was in high school and college in the late '90s and early '00s, I wrote down these passages to ponder.

"He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. ... Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing."
John Stuart Mill, "Liberty and Individuality," from On Liberty (1859)

"[Living in the eternal moment] means, rather, making one's decisions in freedom and responsibility, in self-awareness and in accord with one's own unique character as a person."
Rollo May, Man's Search for Himself (1953), p 272

"The degree of our freedom and self-determination varies with the level which we realize to be our self — the source from which we act."
Alan Watts, Nature, Man, and Woman (1958), p 135

Women say

Later, I noticed these:

"Leading transies is like trying to herd cats."
Cathy Platine www.gallae.com
Note: I found this c. 1998. As seen in 2023, the website says: "Established in 1998 with public rituals held at the Serpent Mound in south central Ohio we moved to New York in 2002 with the purchase of an ageing Silver age Catskill resort inn. We incorporated in 2005 with the formal dedication of the Phrygianum property and transfer of the deed to the corporation."

"Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you're wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn't love you anymore."
Lady Gaga, quoted in the Gulfport, Miss., Sun Herald, quoted in The Week, Dec. 21, 2012, p. 15.

It's not only about what you choose to do, but what you're allowed to do

Thing is, you can choose your own direction, but there are also social consequences to doing so. These consequences fall unequally on different sorts of people. And some people are punished no matter what they choose. In 2023, I think about things like this (April 23, 2023 tweet):