Cold Shoulder

It's one of those mornings when you wake up and are conscious of the fact that you are comfortable. Then you realise that your body is immobile for a reason: it would hurt too much if you moved.

It was a quarter-century ago that I injured my shoulder. It is payback time now. The joint will ambush me on random mornings, holding my entire body painful hostage to that earlier trauma. It takes a lot of effort to move at all, when you know it can only hurt.

So you summon up the will-power. Or not, if some people are to be believed about the absence of free will. And you get out of bed.

The simple philosophical answer to the question of free will is this: whether I have free will or not, moving that shoulder hurts like hell. If I do not have free will, then the logical consequence is that pain is a necessary phenomenon, and must be endured. Or not. If I do have free will, tough, because I have to get up anyway, if I'm going to do what I want to do.

So it seems that my so-called free-will is circumscribed no matter what. And the shoulder reminds me of that. It mocks me. It makes it hard to think, if I have free will; it makes it hard to think, even if I haven't the will. Ah well.