It has been an extremely difficult ethic to practice. On rare occasions, when circumstances and choices were particularly obvious, I was able to say with certainty that I lived for my own sake, free of good counsel, philosophy, philanthropy, and shame. I still think it is best to free oneself from the opinions and whims of others --- else, we are condemned to a kind of slavery that never ends, always chained at the foot to someone ahead and someone behind, a parent, a child, a decent neighbor, an innocent bystander, or the public good. These connections --- chains, really --- are the basis of all ethical obligation, except the moral selfishness advocated by Ayn Rand and those of her disciples, like me, who attempted to govern exactly one life held in perfect isolation from others.

The goal of isolation as a free moral agent seems distant indeed. At a minimum, our intercourse with others is imposed by birth. It took me almost 50 years to disown my mother and father, thinking of them now no differently than any other set of parents, any two people alive or dead, anywhere on earth at any time in history. It was a long struggle to free myself of obligation to my parents, but more importantly, it seemed an eternity before they ceased to occupy a distinct mental object, a meaningful and permanent awareness of Mom and Dad. The familial connection is damned near innate. Of all human labors, none is more gruelling than the willful exorcism of one's childhood.

Nor is it much easier to obliterate the special, natural bond in the opposite case. I have a grown son whom I like and respect, but finally it is of deep and deliberate concent that his life belongs to him,as mine belongs to me. My son is an individual among six billion; my grand-daughters are indistinquishable from those who are starving to death in Africa. Any fantasy of a special relationship, a bond of blood, is poison for all concerned. Race is unimportant to morality. Things are not right or wrong because of skin color or ethnic origin.

So, to me, a discussion of ethnicity is 10% gibberish and 90% vanity, attributing to oneself a history of imagined identity --- the same sort of rot that tempted Hitler and his followers. I have precisely the same contempt for Christians, Moslems, and Jews who vainly assume that they enjoy a special relationship with God because someone else taught them to recite a fairy tale of redemption.

In fact, their "redemption" is nothing more or less than an act of plunder --- exchanging their personal identity for a psychotic delusion of transcendent otherness.

My disdain for sports fans runs a close second to my contempt for religionists. Anyone who sees his life connected to a football team in some meaningful sense is obviously dissatisfied with the reality of his personal existence. Or that's how it seems to me...

*******

Like I said before, when circumstances and choices are particularly obvious, I'm good at discerning the moral imperative of living for my own sake, never confusing individual responsibility with the Dallas Cowboys or an omnipotent Supreme Being who allegedly hears the nightly petitions of every man, woman, and child on earth. The last thing on my mind when I go to sleep is God's will. Ayn Rand's creed invokes reason --- not fantasy --- and it's a relatively straightforward proposition that each of us (man, woman, child, insect) is endowed by nature with the inalienable choice of responsibility or victimhood, freedom or slavery, independence or death (as an individual moral agent.)

However, there is one realm that constantly frustrates my choice of liberty. I'm speaking of marriage.

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When a man and a woman fall in love, they are bonded in a way that defies moral housekeeping.

In almost 20 years of marriage to Queenie, I have lectured, argued, demanded, insisted, resolved and ruled on the fundamental principle of liberty, mainly to myself late at night like a reformed drug addict, hoping that I can stay sober tomorrow, knowing goddamned well that my love will erode whatever I pledge tonight, like a tide that obliterates a kid's footprints on the beach.

I seem to live in a moral sandcastle that melts to sloppy mud in Queenie's ocean.

There is nothing particularly special or different about my wife, no special attributes or powers, no gun at my head that keeps me bonded to her. Rather, it is a consequence of love, an internal and personal choice I made a long time ago. It chained my happiness to hers.

Arguably, the same ambiquity springs from friendships, admiration of artists and musicians, the debt we owe to mentors and patrons. Indeed, every good act performed by every good person on the face of the earth fits this same model. One cannot avoid feeling grateful and honored by the example of courage and independence in others, our spiritual comrades.

These involuntary connections between lovers are the foundation of human society. To find a kindred soul, adrift in the universal soup of meaningless chatter and feigned polity, is usually perceived as a visceral thunderbolt -- blam! He/she is wonderful, in a way that no child, no parent, no preacher or teacher ever was!

Love is the unexpected glory and impossible fulfilment of one's chaste isolation, a union that ais irresistable and right --- however awkward it makes the rest of your life.

In love, morality means nothing very much... My life or the loved one's life --- who cares? --- it's all one thing.

My dignity or theirs? It's interchangeable and ultimately meaningless in the context of what love truly is: unbounded joy in the fact of another's existence.

Unbounded joy, even if they're daft, even if they go missing for ten years, even if they're dead.

One's love does not perish witht he loved one. It can rise in a single encounter; it grows in each unfolding moment together. If you are never betrayed, your love is impregnable, no matter how awful the threat, no matter how terrible the loss.

There is only one form of betrayal: to be deceived by one you loved. It kills love at its root, because the source of all love is respect for the life and courage of the loved one. We cannot love a liar.

Although love routinely blinds me to my moral creed --- to live for my own sake --- I recommend this ethical beacon to all who love and all who are loved:

If you want to multiply the love in your life, you won't go far wrong by being truthful with yourself and everyone you encounter.