he had always assumed that he understood what the responsibility of free will meant -- that you took responsibility for your actions , accepted the pain along with the pleasure , paid the price of being human -- but lately he wondered if somewhere along the way there hadnt been a dangerous and insidiously gradual failure of will on his part , a major sea change of the soul that had somehow gone unrecorded in the weather , the natural landscape , and the various external trappings of his life .