I have observed, through what the moderns might call a miraculous transmission across the centuries, a conversation that took place in a park between two souls and a teacher. What moved me most deeply about the encounter was not the solutions offered but the anguish displayed—the anguish of two individuals beginning to grasp their own freedom and responsibility. For anguish is the mark of the authentic. It is what we feel when we realize that we must choose without the comfort of external authority, rational certainty, or systematic guidance.
The Consistent Man's confusion about what to be consistent toward is the beginning of wisdom. For when he truly understands that he must choose. That no system, however perfect, can choose for him.
The Woman of Mirrors' question about who does the choosing is equally profound. For when she realizes that she becomes herself precisely in choosing—that the chooser is not prior to the choice but is constituted by it—she will be ready to step into the uncertainty that authentic selfhood requires.
Neither of them needs more rational analysis or systematic methodology. What they need is the courage to choose themselves into existence, to become who they are through the very act of choosing who they will be. The Consistent Man chose once. He must regain the courage to choose yet again.
This is the paradox that no system can resolve: one must choose to become oneself before one knows who oneself is. The Consistent Man chose to become consistent, and thus came to know himself, before he first knew himself. The self is not a given that one discovers through introspection or rational analysis. The self is a task—perhaps the only task that matters—and it can be completed only by those willing to work without a blueprint.
Even if all things can be shown to proceed logically, one can still choose otherwise. The Advocate's (Alicia's) confidence that the requirements of life provide objective guidance, and thus provide a ground for their choice, misses this entirely.
The choice to exist—to truly exist as a self rather than merely persist as a biological organism—is not a choice made once and then executed systematically. It is the choice that must be made again and again, in fear and trembling, without the comfort of rational certainty.