The Will Is Not Free: You Have To Earn It

Basil Gala on what it takes to free ourselves from our formative factors.

- Basil Gala

“It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate, 

I am the captain of my soul.”

The poet William Ernest Henley, one-legged, frequently sick with tuberculosis, wrote: “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” It was a striking assertion of free will.

Habits and addictions seem to bind up us and people around us, inevitably controlling our acts, keeping us prisoners, unable to escape our innate character or environmental influences. Jim was a talented handyman who worked for my brother and me on our buildings a few years back. He could do original construction or repairs from the foundation to the roof, including plumbing and electrical. In his forties, he looked boyish and gentle as he bustled about, feverishly knocking things together. He earned a good income, but lived in a garage and drove an ancient pickup truck, which he was constantly fixing. One day in his garage home he took his own life with a shotgun. We found out he had been on the drug speed (an amphetamine), using nearly all his earnings to feed his addiction. Jim apparently killed himself to escape the prison of his habit. Was that an act of a free will, or an inevitable result of his heredity and environment?

A dear family friend is 76, with a heart condition, but still working at a job that stresses his system, climbing ladders to roofs. He loves the casinos on the reservations. A successful family man, intelligent and hardworking, he sometimes declares: “I’ve quit gambling; I’m not going to the casinos anymore.” His long-suffering wife sighs and says nothing. She knows he means well, intends to quit his vice, but is unable to do it.