Involuntary?

Nobody asked but …

I don’t recall a day, in my 73 years on this planet, in which I was confined to a condition of involuntaryness for more than 12 hours.  And I only use that number as a placeholder — I really can’t remember even that long of a drought of free will.  Sure, I went to Air Force ROTC camp at Lockbourne AFB, in Columbus OH, in the Summer of  ’67, for 4 weeks, at the height of the Vietnam War, but I was exercising an option to maintain my draft deferment.  I missed my wife terribly, as well as my infant daughter, but I knew exactly when it would end, and I was having a big adventure. There have been innumerable times since, when I needed to be someplace at a certain time, but without exception these arose from my choice.  When others label me (I laugh here because they believe they are stinging, and they believe the label), an anarchist.  The -ist suffix seems to imply a belief to them, but I tell them that I do not believe in anarchy, since it exists independently of beliefs.  Anarchy is! Every moment of life without a ruler is a moveable feast of anarchy.  If anyone else seeks to remove my natural state of free will, he or she imprisons him- or herself to the chains of keeping me unfree.

Kilgore Forelle