Dostoevsky isn't offering us the tired consolation that "nobody can touch your thoughts"—he's describing something harder: the discipline of refusing to let circumstance become your identity. A prisoner in Siberia faces the temptation to accept the world's verdict on who he is, to internalize the cage. His claim to freedom was an active choice, a daily resistance that required as much work as physical labor itself. We see this same friction in modern life whenever someone keeps learning or creating under conditions meant to break the spirit—the struggling artist working a soul-crushing job, the chronically ill person who won't let pain define their ambitions—and we recognize that Dostoevsky wasn't speaking metaphorically about some untouchable inner sanctum, but about the exhausting, real work of staying yourself.