“This verse in one of Alice in Chains’ most haunting songs captures the essence of the Stoic battle: “And yet I find And yet I find Repeating in my head If I can’t be my own I’d feel better dead” The need to be one’s own. One’s own man. Free from outside influence. Free from tyranny. Free from anxiety. Fear. Unnecessary pain. To be free from the slavery that Seneca talked about — the slavery of pointless obligations, other people’s expectations, materialism, the slavery of addiction or ambition. And yet it is with some tragic irony that the man who wrote that lyric was for too much of his talented artistic life not his own. He was addicted to heroin and cocaine, cigarettes and self-loathing. In the end it was death that relieved him of those forms of slavery, or rather we could say that the slavery killed him and deprived us of him exactly 16 years ago yesterday.”
What is freedom for you?
What is freedom for you?
What is freedom for you?
“This verse in one of Alice in Chains’ most haunting songs captures the essence of the Stoic battle: “And yet I find And yet I find Repeating in my head If I can’t be my own I’d feel better dead” The need to be one’s own. One’s own man. Free from outside influence. Free from tyranny. Free from anxiety. Fear. Unnecessary pain. To be free from the slavery that Seneca talked about — the slavery of pointless obligations, other people’s expectations, materialism, the slavery of addiction or ambition. And yet it is with some tragic irony that the man who wrote that lyric was for too much of his talented artistic life not his own. He was addicted to heroin and cocaine, cigarettes and self-loathing. In the end it was death that relieved him of those forms of slavery, or rather we could say that the slavery killed him and deprived us of him exactly 16 years ago yesterday.”