Another Choice

But to be alone amidst the others: there is the sign of the erring and the lie.

Thus do we experience today a dual anguish: that of the lone wounded, of the rejected child, of the raped woman, of the one who has just lost one’s dearest – and that of not being able to share or to help. For the human individual, however great and powerful be one’s personality in relation to one’s known experiential milieu, is as incapable of actually feeling the distress of all those who are suffering at any given moment, as of relieving it: one remains intractably separate from the others as from the Consciousness which alone can help.

All of one’s attempts are condemned to exteriority and error.

One is only possessed of limited sympathy, a measure of compassion and a partial identification, imperfect and finally useless.

***

This child, still inhabited by an almost virgin grace, this child who is also oneself, when one is faced with its gaze of incomprehension before the quarrels, discords and violence of the world, one is frozen with unease and guilt – which one tries to suppress.

It is our duty, isn’t it: we then will endeavor to teach this child to adapt to this reality we all share – it is a matter of safety!

We are wrong.

We say, “this is life!”.

We say, “better get used to it!”.

And we are going to prepare this child for it, teach it the means and defenses, all the stratagems and feints and ambitions to be assimilated so as to deal with this closed, imprisoning reality and carve a personal future into it.

And in this way do we become accomplices to a great fraud.

***

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