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This circle is, most likely, not a circle with a concrete, actual form but, rather, one that exists only within our minds. That’s what I think. When we truly love somebody with all our heart, or feel deep compassion, or have an idealistic sense of how the world should be, or when we discover faith
Your brain is made to think about difficult things. To help you get to a point where you understand something that you didn’t understand at first. And that becomes the cream of your life. The rest is boring and worthless.
What I couldn’t yet grasp were all the myriad phenomenon that lay in the space between happiness and sadness, how they related to each other. As a result, I often felt anxious and helpless.
Even memory, though, can hardly be relied on. Can anyone say for certain what really happened to us back then?
Perhaps I had idealized her in my mind at the instant that we passed each other, to the point where even if I actually saw her again I wouldn’t recognize her? (I think the last possibility is the most likely.)
When I couldn’t get that sensation in the real world, I would quietly let my memory of those feelings awaken inside me. In this way, memory became one of my most valued emotional tools, a means of survival, even.
“I believe that love is the indispensable fuel that allows us to go on living. Someday that love may end. Or it may never amount to anything. But even if love fades away, even if it’s unrequited, you can still hold on to the memory of having loved someone, of having fallen in love with someone. And that’s a valuable source of warmth. Without that heat source a person’s heart—and a monkey’s heart, too—would turn into a bitterly cold, barren wasteland. A place where not a ray of sunlight falls, where the wildflowers of peace, the trees of hope, have no chance to grow.
And now here I was, a first person singular. If I’d chosen a different direction, most likely I wouldn’t be here. But still—who is that in the mirror?
