My friend,
I am far more honest on the page than in oration, for there is a limitless unease about hearing my own voice, as if the very sound of it compounds primal guilt. There are the fortunate ones who fall in love with the sound of their voices; well, they are gods amongst men or so they believe. But the question is: why is there this unease? Why must I feel ill-fit for the world? Why can I not stand, as Luther did before nailing the 95 theses, and proclaim that I can do no other? Is it because this feeling of unease is somehow natural to my disposition as so many have told me before? "You're just naturally a shy person." But that's not true at all. I would burst into flames if not for her gaze, or would her eyes arouse the brute and set me ablaze? Look at her as she tames the brute with a mere glance. But, in any case, the surface is not who I am, if knowing oneself is possible at all; or is knowing oneself simply a stubborn deception. Oh, it doesn't matter - the authentic self, that is; since I have too readily believe their prescriptions, and readily have lived the "type" while forgetting all else. Ah, settling into expectations, isn't that what poor little Sonya meant when she told her Uncle Vanya, "we shall find peace"? Go along as you are, and in the end, when everything is in the dustbin, you wirth on and within nothing.
For I cannot speak confidently without compromising my principled stance, if there is such a thing as principles; I choose silence after all. You see, I often find myself pressured into polemics, and forced invariably "choose" silence for the sake of logic. But with the passage of time and richer experience, silence has become an untenable choice, just as polemic remains ever more repugnant. If with convicted voice, I proclaim my truth from the highest mount or loftiest of pulpits, will I have not already revealed an ignorance otherwise concealed by silence? But pity me, pity poor old me, without ambition or drive, I do not want to be the superstar, much less a prophet or a god of transience. Time and experience has tutored me about such flawed assumptions - to be with the world demands public action, for private contemplation merely assuages and torments the individual soul. So why can I not act? Is there nothing but infinite postponement defining the condition of man? Any answer, if such thing is possible, cannot be unproblematic. My father taught me to distrust the man who peddles easy answers, definitive and parochial; they close off infinity to find a world no larger than the human eye and its cogito. Then again, the dictum peddled by father is an easy answer itself - should I disregard him, relegate that recollection to the dustbin as well? The world will go on without me; and I am left to depart simply to return.
