I listened to a podcast interview on dialectical behavior therapy. The psychologist stated that people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder do not have an overwhelmingly strong ego. They have a great fear of being ordinary. I can think of several examples without straining my memory.
These are people who crave power and status. Many of us have a little of that. As Ryan Holliday wrote in The Daily Stoic, “You’d think that the more powerful you are, the more freedom you’d have. The more money and success you have, the more you can do. You’d think that being a millionaire or being a celebrity or being the CEO would finally unshackle you from all the obnoxious and annoying constraints of being a ‘regular’ person…”
Maybe you have had those thoughts at times. Holliday continues, “How wrong this is. How wrong this has always been.”
Freedom longings populate the world in this era. In America a weird sense of what constitutes freedom has recently evolved. No one can tell me what to do, when to do it, or how to do it, any time or any where.
Paul tried valiantly to describe freedom in the spirit in his writing to the Galatians and Romans and other places. He fell a little short of clarity. Or maybe it’s difficult to understand.
I picked up this thought from Holliday in The Daily Stoic, “It was Eisenhower who said that freedom is really better described as the, ‘opportunity for self-discipline.’ ”
We must learn to tell ourselves that what we want to do is neither moral or ethical or just or beneficial. We must aim again.
Faith Venture 
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