Free will is the question that complicates regret, responsibility, and self-understanding. Did you choose, or were you produced by everything that happened before the choice? The practical answer is that you act as though you chose. The philosophical answer is genuinely uncertain. Living inside that uncertainty — with responsibility for your actions and uncertainty about your agency — is a particular kind of discomfort.

Anonymous thoughts about free will posted here are from people who have sat with the question — the honest account of living with actions while remaining uncertain whether they were truly yours.