I was not born to be forced.
I will breathe after my own fashion.
If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies;   and so a man.

Most men [...] are so occupied with the factitious cares and
superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be
plucked by them. [...] When he has obtained those things which are
necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the
superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation
from humbler toil having commenced.

Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street,
where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it
breathes its own breath over again; their shadows, morning and
evening, reach farther than their daily steps. We should come home
from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with
new experience and character.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
American writer