The ego, as the guardian of our conscious self, often distorts our perception of existence when the demands of reality clash with urges emanating from the depths of our psyche. This discrepancy between action and values can create cognitive dissonance and pose a threat to self-worth. The ego creates an enemy to insulate itself from this culpability. However, everything that exists is capable of acting and of being acted upon.
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views they take of them. Negative capability does not reduce the individual to its circumstances holding a dual capacity for compliance or rebellion. Instead, it recognises the individual's ability to withstand the real. Negative capability encompasses the capacity to embrace the "burden of misery'.
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our power to choose our response. Whatever happens to us may only have the sense that we make of it. It is in telling the story that we know who we are and perhaps see who we might becobe.