Michael Santoro

“In our society today, we have placed a great stress on being authentic. We have talked about placing masks over the face of our 'real' selves, and of playing roles which disguise our true and real selves. The implication is that somewhere, inside of you and inside of me, lurk our real selves. Supposedly, this real self is a static and formed reality. There are moments when this real self of mine shines out of me, and there are other moments when I feel compelled to camouflage my real self.
There is perhaps some justification for this manner of speaking, but I think that it can be more misleading than helpful. There is no fixed, true and real person inside of you or me, precisely because being a person necessarily implies becoming a person, being in process. If I am anything as a person, it is what I think, judge, feel, value, honour, esteem, love, hate, fear, desire, hope for, believe in, and am committed to.
These are the things that define my person, and they are constantly in process, in process of change. Unless my mind and heart are hopelessly barricaded, all these things that define me as a person are forever changing.
My person is not a little hard core inside me, a little fully-formed statue that is real and authentic, permanent and fixed; person rather implies a dynamic process. In other words, if you knew me yesterday, please do not think that it is the same person that you are meeting today.
I have experienced more life, I have encountered new depths in those I love, I have suffered and prayed, and I am different.
Please do not give me a 'batting average', fixed and irrevocable, because I am 'in there' constantly, taking my swings at the opportunities of daily living. Approach me, then, with a sense of wonder, study my face and hands and voice for the signs of change; for it is certain that I have changed. But even if you recognize this, I may be somewhat afraid to tell you who I am.”
― John Powell, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?

“A man is as young as the risks he takes.”
― Will Durant, Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God

“When my children enter college I trust that education will open to them many paths toward the understanding of life. “May my son study history,” said Napoleon at St. Helena, “for it is the only true philosophy, and the only true psychology.” Psychology is largely a theory of human behavior, philosophy is too often an ideal of human behavior, and history is occasionally a record of human behavior. We cannot trust all the historians, for sometimes, like Akbar’s, they were engaged by their heroes and gave them all the virtues and the victories. But no man is educated, or fit for statesmanship, who cannot see his time in the perspective of the past. Every lad and lass should begin, in high school, an orderly recapitulation of the pageant of history; not, as we used to do, with Greece and Rome, which were the old age of the ancient world, but with Mesopotamia and Egypt and Crete, from which civilization flowed over into Greece and Rome, and through them to Northern Europe and ourselves.”
― Will Durant, Fallen Leaves: Last Words on Life, Love, War, and God

“The older I get, the more I find that you can only live with those who free you, who love you with an affection that is as light to bear as it is strong to feel.

Today's life is too hard, too bitter, too anemic, for us to
undergo new bondages, from whom we love (...]. This is how I am your friend, I love your happiness, your freedom, Your adventure in one word, and I would like to be for you the companion we are sure of, always.”
― Albert Camus, Correspondance (1945-1959)