As you get closer to understanding the truth, the more depressing reality feels because you realize how stuck on rails your life really is, how much of your conscious experience is just an elaborate illusion, a rich, chunky stew of assumptions, of super-imposed visuals and perceptions, of stories and rationalizations. Even the idea that we can choose what we’re thinking about is barely, BARELY accurate.

If we as a species have any free will at all, it’s a tiny kernel, a tiny little seed that few people even attempt to nurture.