“The first valley is the valley of the quest itself,” Quichotte said. “Here the searcher has to cast aside every kind of dogma, including both belief and unbelief. Old age itself is such a valley. In old age one becomes detached from the dominant ideas of one’s time. The present, with its arguments, its quarreling ideas, is revealed as fleeting and unreal. The past is long gone and the future, one recognizes, is not a place in which one will find a foothold. To be separated from the present, past, and future is to entertain the eternal, to allow the eternal to enter one’s being.” “But if you
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