looking at an old email from von:

"...these days more of us grow up immersed in the belief that the shape your life eventually takes is more in your control than out of it. i say "illusion" and "oblique" because i believe that the set of people for whom life-choice is real remains small in modernity. it may have grown since medieval times, but proportionally, it is still tiny...what happens to the one-legged man who grows up believing he is many-sided? existential angst, perhaps. it may not be so good either to be truly many-sided -- it is the inverse, not the opposite, of being one-legged -- for this implies that every choice carries almost similar opportunity cost. self-doubt plagues the many-sided, for how can they be sure that the choice they made was the right one without the benefit of contrast? for the one-legged man who knows himself, choices in life are much more clearly-defined: do what you can, the rest isn't worth doing."