longing

He took it out in boxing, and he came out of Princeton with painful self-consciousness and the flattened nose, and was married by the first girl who was nice to him.

"Why don't you get married, you two?" "We want to lead our own lives," I said. "We have our careers," Brett said.

At times he heard, deep in his breast, a soft and dying voice that admonished softly, lamented softly, barely audible. Then for an hour he was aware that he was leading a strange life, that he was doing all sorts of things that were merely a game, that he was cheerful, granted, and sometimes felt joy, but that real life was flowing past him and not touching him. Like a juggler juggling his balls, he played with his business, with the people around him, watched them, enjoyed them; but he never participated with his heart, with the wellspring of his being. The wellspring ran somewhere, as if far from him, ran and ran, invisible, having nothing to do with his life. And sometimes he was startled by such thoughts and wished that it could be granted him to participate with passion and with all his heart in the childlike doings of the day, to live really—to act really, to enjoy really, and to live really instead of merely standing on the side as a spectator.

Since leaving my job for the trail, I have received overwhelming support from former coworkers and from friends who hold similar jobs. They are intrigued by the adventure, but what they can most relate to is the desire to abandon the cubicle, to walk away from unfulfilling employment. In some ways I feel like a surrogate for their unrealized desire to escape, an escapee cheered on by the prisoners.

There had been a slice of time, sliding away from him now and fading into the slippery past, when Walker had been a happy man. When his life should've ended to keep him from enduring any of the suffering beyond. But he had made it through that brief bliss and now could hardly recall it. He couldn't imagine what it felt like to rise with anticipation in the morning, to fall asleep with contentment at the end of the day.

Man faces the darkening shadows of his life. His passage to the grave. If she were here it would not be so bad. Not bad at all.

"I've always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can't afford it." What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of 'security'. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine - and before we know it our lives are gone".