"I'd still like to find him."
"I'll bet you wouldn't know him if you saw him. And you might waste a whole lifetime looking. Then, if you did find him, what makes you think he'd want you hanging around?"
"At least, if he did kick me out, I'd know he'd made the absolutely correct decision," Charles said, smiling.
"Well, don't count me in on your search. If you take my advice, you'll smash your invention or whatever it is and stay in your own world. There's nothing to be gained by exploring the paths you might have followed."
"What's to be gained by not going?"
"That's up to you. You can stay and make the best of your own world."
"You're a fine one to talk. Are you going back to your own life—to Kathy? Even though you don't get along with her?"
Nodding emphatically, Chuck said, "Of course. Your Utopia is as remote to me as Heaven or Hell. The important thing is not the hundreds of lives you could have led or all the possibilities that occur in your lifetime. The thing that counts is what you do with the one lifetime that's given to you. You're not happy with Estelle so you blame Estelle, thinking you'd be happier with Kathy or someone else. I felt the same way about Kathy and thought I'd be happier with Estelle. Now that you've given us both the opportunity to see ourselves ruining both lives, we can see that it's probably us at fault. If you want to find the perfect Charles Mead, you have to find him inside yourself—not in some untouchable otherworld."
"You should have been a minister," Charles told him. "You preach a good sermon."