otherwise you become a slave and the slave of all... Freedom is more precious than any gifts for which you may be tempted to give it up. Lay less stress on making many dependent on you than on keeping yourself independent of any... Above all do not regard responsibility as a favour, for generally it is another's plan to make one dependent on him.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Taking on responsibility for everyone and everything is a slow sale of your own freedom. Each obligation you accept is a claim on you, and past a point the accumulation makes you the servant of all of them, unable to move without someone's leave. Freedom, the counsel insists, is more valuable than most of the gifts and honours for which people trade it away. There is a sharper warning too: be suspicious when responsibility is handed to you dressed as a favour or an honour, because it is often a deliberate move to make you dependent, a trap with a ribbon on it. The wiser priority is to guard your own independence rather than to make many people dependent on you, and to weigh every obligation as the piece of freedom it actually costs.
Practice
- Weigh every obligation as a piece of freedom sold; the accumulation of responsibilities you did not need makes you the servant of all of them (maxim 252 keeps the ratio).
- Prize your independence above making others dependent on you; freedom is worth more than most of the honours people trade it for.
- Be suspicious of responsibility handed to you as a favour; it is often a plan to make you dependent, a trap with a ribbon (maxim 5's engineered dependence, seen from the target's side).
Use this when
- Use this before accepting new obligations, honours, or responsibilities; ask what freedom each one actually costs.
- Use it when a burden is offered as a compliment; the flattering framing is often the wrapping on a dependence.
Ignore this when
- Don't read this as refusing all responsibility; the counsel is against becoming responsible for all, not against carrying your real share (maxim 258 still shares the load).
- Don't guard independence into isolation; the aim is to not be enslaved, not to owe or be owed nothing ever (maxim 226 still obliges freely).
A picture of it
Flattered to be handed more and more responsibility, each new load framed as a mark of trust, a manager wakes up one day the servant of all of it, unable to take a step without someone's leave and worn thin by obligations he never chose. Looking harder, he sees that some of the burdens were traps with ribbons, handed over precisely to make him dependent and useful to someone else's plan. He starts weighing each new responsibility as the piece of freedom it costs, and declining the ones dressed as honours. Guarding his independence, he discovers, was worth more than all the trust he had been so flattered to accept.
Every obligation accepted is freedom sold, and some favours are traps with ribbons. Guard your independence above the honour of being needed.