The more choices we make the more we become who we are. That if one is in a position where choices are being made for you (like a child or a cat) one's idea of self stalls. Like a conversation amongst three people, or planning a birthday party (that you later cancel), we must take possession of ourself before we can give it away.

This requires not just knowledge, but an ability and willingness to adhere to what one knows, right or wrong; to test every possible explanation and carry it though (to failure) until one reaches, as Wallace Stevens put it the palm at the end of the mind. You have to be a prince before the kingdom is yours to leave.

Writing will not get me or anybody else there, but the effort of concentration and the nudge of attention helps bring me to autonomy in that I cannot be sure of the choices I am making if I am not aware of the choices I make. Subject verb object and back again. Poetry is what one is willing to take credit for.