We may not stand behind actual prison bars, but our circumstances, as individuals and as a people, may evoke in us a sense of loss or longing or simple hunger for truth, for justice, for understanding. And I believe that much of our unrest stems from a culture that tells us we can have it all, that we can be equally good as parents and professionals, that our choices are endless and our potential exhaustless. In me sleeps Zorba's concern to allow no lonely woman to remain comfortless, Camus' passion to lessen the suffering of the innocent, Hemingway's drive to live and write with lucidity, and the unheroic desire to see each day end with tranquility and a shared cup of tea. I am so many, yet I may be only one. I mourn for all the selves I kill when I decide to be a single person.
Decision is a cutting-off, a castration.
I travel one path only by neglecting many. The human choice may be between tragedy and pathos, Oedipus and Willy Loman. I will never see, strange flesh I will never touch, ills I will never cure, and I choose to be in the world as a friend and a father, an explorer of new ideas and styles of life. Yet perhaps Zorba will not leave me altogether. I would not like to live without dancing, without unknown roads to explore, without the confidence that my actions were helpful to some.