Doing What You Want

I’ve been re-listening to the audiobook version of The Fountainhead this past week. If you’ve only read it, or never have, I highly recommend the audiobook.

The Fountainhead does a great job of clarifying and demonstrating the difference between living as a driver or a passenger in your life.

My favorite quote from The Fountainhead comes from Peter Keating in a moment of reflection near the end of the story on the seriousness of true desire:

“Katie … for six years … I thought of how I’d ask your forgiveness some day. And now I have the chance, but I won’t ask it. It seems … it seems beside the point. I know it’s horrible to say that, but that’s how it seems to me. It was the worst thing I ever did in my life—but not because I hurt you. I did hurt you, Katie, and maybe more than you know yourself. But that’s not my worst guilt…. Katie, I wanted to marry you. It was the only thing I ever really wanted. And that’s the sin that can’t be forgiven—that I hadn’t done what I wanted. It feels so dirty and pointless and monstrous, as one feels about insanity, because there’s no sense to it, no dignity, nothing but pain—and wasted pain….

Katie, why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world—to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want. As I wanted to marry you. Not as I want to sleep with some woman or get drunk or get my name in the papers. Those things—they’re not even desires—they’re things people do to escape from desires—because it’s such a big responsibility, really to want something.”