I don't want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.
On the sixth day God saw He couldn't do it all, so He created ENGINEERS
The rule for finding plots for character-centered novels, which is to ask: 'So what's the worst possible thing I can do to *this* guy?' And then do it.
If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?
One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns.
But pain seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?