“Guilty,” I said. “I feel guilty. What does it say about me that I’d leave? What kind of person does it make me?” She didn’t reply for a moment, and I felt the long span between, the miles and miles of wire. At last she spoke. “The kind of person you are.” A rush of laughter escaped me. “What?” “It makes you the kind of person you are. People have this idea that what they do changes who they are. A married man has an affair and he thinks, Now I’ve become a bad person. As if something had changed.” “Meaning he already was a bad person?” “Meaning bad isn’t the issue. Meaning you do what you do. Not without consequences for other people, of course, sometimes very grave ones. But it’s not very helpful to regard your choices as a series of right or wrong moves. They don’t define you as much as you define them.”

The Dive From Clausen’s Pier