Autonomy

A parable by Anthony de Mello, SJ:

"The Master seemed totally unaffected by what people thought of him. 

When his disciples asked him how he had attained this stage of inner freedom, he laughed aloud and said:

'Till I was twenty I did not care about what people thought of me.
After twenty I worried  endlessly about what the others thought.
Then one day, after fifty, I suddenly realized that they hardly ever thought of me at all'."