Those thoroughly informed about North Americans say that “the ruling opinion in the United States declares itself against everyone who refrains from striving for the highest that is attainable for him. To stay behind from free will is actually considered a disgrace, as a sort of crime against society.”
— Nietzsche, Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Human, All Too Human I (Winter 1874/75–Winter 1877/78)
I’ve been told several times that I coulda/shoulda been a writer. I don’t take it seriously; I think it’s just one of those rote things people say to anyone who can string sentences together. In any event, my response has always been that, one, that’s about as realistic as saying that I should’ve tried to be a rock star since I love music so much, and two, that I’m already happy writing as a hobby, and I’m self-aware enough to know that turning it into a job would kill a lot of what makes it enjoyable. Like Bartleby, I simply would prefer not to.
Christopher Knight vanished into the Maine woods for three decades just because he felt like it. Ivan Karamazov stands at the ticket window of paradise and pushes the stub back: even if the ledger balances, one tortured child’s tears are not acceptable to him as the price of admission. Milton’s Satan, tragic and resplendent, would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. I’m fascinated by these acts of refusal, this resistance of something — will, soul, sheer cussedness — against the inhuman harmony of logical or moral necessity. I would rather keep shouldering my burden of agency than accept the undignified relief of handing it over.
Still, pride left to ferment turns caustic. Dostoevsky’s Underground Man shows how a life organized purely around “no” corrodes from within. He sacrifices health and love to his perverse notion of freedom, until refusal is his new slavemaster. The lesson, as always, is the golden mean. Say no judiciously, so your yes can mean something.