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The Inheritance Problem
Are We Living Our Lives, or Continuing Someone Else’s?
I have been thinking about freedom recently.
Not freedom in the political sense.
Not freedom as the ability to choose whatever we want.
Something deeper.
The freedom to become something other than what we inherited.
We often speak as though our lives begin with us.
As though we arrive in the world as independent individuals who simply make choices, create futures, and determine our destinies.
But is that really true?
The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether our lives begin long before we are born.
Not mystically.
Historically.
Before we arrive, there is already a family.
A culture.
A language.
A community.
A history.
A set of assumptions about what is possible and what is not.
We inherit these things before we inherit any conscious idea of ourselves.
This raises a question I cannot seem to let go of:
