My inner voice changes shape depending on the crime. When I fail, it's almost tender: "Let it go. Your success is just around the bend." When I don't follow through, the tenderness vanishes and the contract appears: "You have to follow through if you want to win." That's the belief underneath everything - that the reward comes only after the performance, never before it. "Nobody else will do it for you. And you won't let anybody do it anyway." That last sentence is the oldest one in the whole set, and it wasn't originally mine. It was installed in a house where wanting help and wanting warmth were the same dangerous request. Yesterday, I didn't want to stop working on my homework to answer these questions, because they were "very relevant in my case... very interesting to me." No contract. No winning required. No forcing. Just something that was finally about me, pulling me forward instead of pushing me. Interesting, isn't it?