Here, Beside This Great Black

The Fact Is I Don't Lead A Simple Enough Inner Life. I Indulge In Excesses, Bacchanalia Of The Spirit. Perhaps I Identify Too Much With Everything I Read And Study. Someone Like Dostoevsky Still Shatters Me.

Thinking Gets You Nowhere. It May Be A Fine And Noble Aid In Academic Studies, But You Can't Think Your Way Out Of Emotional Difficulties. That Takes Something Altogether Different. You Have To Make Yourself Passive Then, And Just Listen. Re-establish Contact With A Slice Of Eternity.

I Feel Like A Small Battlefield In Which The Problems, Or Some Of The Problems, Of Our Time Are Being Fought Out. All One Can Hope To Do Is Keep Oneself Humbly Available, To Allow Oneself To Be A Battlefield. After All, The Problems Must Be Accommodated, Have Somewhere To Struggle And Come To Rest And We, Poor Little Humans, Must Put Our Inner Space At Their Service And Not Run Away.

Before, I Always Lived In Anticipation . . . That It Was All A Preparation For Something Else, Something "greater," More "genuine." But That Feeling Has Dropped Away From Me Completely. I Live Here And Now, This Minute, This Day, To The Full, And The Life Is Worth Living.

I Think What Weakens People Most Is Fear Of Wasting Their Strength.