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Curiosity can bring guts out of hiding at times, maybe even get them going. But curiosity evaporates. Guts have to go for the long haul. Curiosity’s like an amusing friend you can’t really trust. It turns you on and then it leaves you to make it on your own – with whatever guts you can muster.”
He was no fool. He knew what he was best suited for: not the real world of communal action but a world that called for the disciplined and systematic use of knowledge, that prized the individual skills of the intellect.
The passage of time will usually extract the venom from most things and render them harmless. Then, sooner or later, I forget about them.
But the day I turned twenty, I reached a simple conclusion: life was not worth it. Life was not worth such a struggle.”
The curiosity I felt about a life without pain was keeping me alive, but strictly on a temporary basis.
“But finally, Mr Wind-up Bird, isn’t that just what life is? Aren’t we all trapped in the dark somewhere, and they’ve taken away our food and water, and we’re slowly dying, little by little …?”
The light shines into the act of life for only the briefest moment – perhaps only a matter of seconds. Once it is gone and one has failed to grasp its offered revelation, there is no second chance. One may have to live the rest of one’s life in hopeless depths of loneliness and remorse. In that twilight world, one can no longer look forward to anything.
