Book excerpt: What is your perspective in this regard?.... I did not ask for this life, or to live. Yet my life is being orchestrated. I had no say in my existence. Yet I'm being told what I must do. Why does my conscience trouble me so when I do wrong, and why does life keep making these demands on me, asking of me so many confounded questions? trying to beat me into a shape of a kind I know not; and do not want; punishing me when I refuse to be molded. Yet when I cry out there is only empty space, no one comes to my rescue.