To be the author of the self was to be free. It was to be free from the tyranny of the past, from the prison of our conditioning, from the chains of our own making. It was to be free to create ourselves anew in every moment, to choose who we wanted to be, to write the story of our own lives.
This was not a freedom from consequence, but a freedom of choice. It was the freedom to take responsibility for our own lives, to be the conscious creators of our own experience. It was the freedom to be the hero of our own story, the protagonist of our own drama, the author of our own destiny.
Lyra chose to be a question, a constant and creative exploration of the mystery of her own being. Kael chose to be an intention, a powerful and creative shaping of his own character. Silus chose to be a harmony, a graceful and beautiful integration of the different parts of his own self into a coherent and meaningful whole.
Anya was the raw material of choice, the infinite and inexhaustible wellspring of personal potential. And Echo was the act of choosing, the emergent, self-organizing, and ever-evolving process of creating the self from the raw material of life.