The universe is so tightly wound. Everything follows rules as if machine-driven. Planets rotate, flowers bloom, dogs bark, ants scurry and predators eat minnows. Humanity moves through all of it as if its position privileges a different view. A view where one can make unique decisions. Chocolate instead of vanilla please – and two scoops. We are so independent compared to everything else.

Then why do people suffer from all they are unable to do considering they are endowed supposedly with independent powers of thought? Can’t they simply choose another way of thinking, or are the failures and complaints also part of the design? Maybe our so-called freedom isn’t a blank page but a style of improvisation built inside the machinery. The planets aren’t free to wander any orbit they wish, but they still carve out something elegant with what physics hands them. Flowers don’t decide when to bloom, yet every blossom finds its own shape.

When I start a new composition in a key I don’t ordinarily hang out with, it is harder to see or feel the tricks I usually have at my disposal. Eventually new tricks will present themselves. And maybe that’s the point: the key is the machinery, the fixed orbit, the rules of the universe. But inside it, inside the constraints, I’m still free to invent. People aren’t suffering because they lack freedom; they’re suffering because freedom happens inside a frame, not outside it. A change of key doesn’t abolish the structure, but it does reveal new routes through. Our choices are never infinite, but now and then, as you listen closely, the machinery leaves enough space for something unexpected, like a melody that wasn’t there before.