You cannot be anything other than what you are, I wrote a friend. So why does our culture make it so hard to be oneself? In the land of the free, we are not so very free after all. A few years ago, I worked in an extremely conservative place. One person, in particular, was very cruel to me if I didn't conform. She'd humiliate me in front of the students. Her greatest interest, so it seemed, was to suck the life force out of me and remake me in her image. And, in spite of myself, I began to think like her. I started taking on her and my other colleagues' opinions. Puny little thoughts in my head. Boxing people into the categories of us and them. Provincialism, alive and well in the heartland, and I was becoming its disciple. So I left. It's taken me a year to shake off that woman.

I have these radical thoughts about peace, love, faith, and the evils of capitalism, and I keep them in my head, or share them with my safe circle of friends. I fear. I fear what people will think of me if I say them out loud, and will go only so far in expressing them. Allowing the heavy hand of culture to silence me, I feel his masculine fingers across my lips, shushing. "Don't make trouble," he whispers in my ear. I need to be able to shake him off and do what needs to be done. Love, unfettered, be my guide.