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Sunday, February 15, 2004

"The more we live, the more convinced we become of two truths that contradict each other. The first is that next to the reality of life all the fictions of literature and art pale. It’s true that they give us a nobler pleasure than what we get from life, but they’re like dreams which, though offering us feelings not felt in life and joining together forms that never meet in life, are none the less dreams that dissipate when we wake up, leaving no memories or nostalgia with which we could later live a second life.

The other truth is that, since every noble soul desires to live life in its entirety—experiencing all things, all places and all feelings—and since this is objectively impossible, the only way for a noble soul to live life subjectively; only by denying life can it be lived in its totality.

These two truths are mutually exclusive. The wise man won’t try to reconcile them, nor will he dismiss one or the other. But he will have to follow one or the other, yearning at times for the one he didn’t choose; or he’ll dismiss them both, rising above himself in a personal nirvana.

Happy the man who doesn’t ask for more than what life spontaneously gives him, being guided by the instinct of cats, which seek sunlight when there’s sun, and when there’s no sun then heat, wherever they find it. Happy the man who renounces his personality in favour of the imagination and who delights in contemplating other people’s lives, experiencing not all impressions but the outward spectacle of all impressions. And happy, finally, the man who renounces everything, who has nothing that can be taken from him, nothing that can be diminished. "

posted by voyeur @ 2/15/2004 01:54:00 PM