Ortega y Gasset on Possibility, Freedom, and Identity

From "Man as a Project":

Regarding these possibilities of being it is important to comment upon the following:

First: That they are not given to me, rather I must invent them for myself, be it in an original manner or by transmission of other men, even in the ambience of my life. I plan projects of being and doing in light of the circumstances. Circumstance is the only thing that I find which is given to me. It is too often forgotten that man without imagination is impossible without the capacity of inventing for himself a life-figure, and of idealizing the person which he will become. Man is the novelist of himself, be he original or a plagiarist.

Second: I must choose among these possibilities. Therefore, I am free. But understand well: I am free by obligation. I am free whether I want to be or not. Liberty is not an activity exercised by a being which, apart from and before exercising it, already has a fixed being. Being free means lacking constitutive identity, not pertaining to a determined being, being able to be something other than that which one was, and not being able to adhere oneself finally and eternally on any determined being. The only thing that must be fixed and stable in the free being is constitutive instability.