I do have moments of doubt. I wonder about the meaning of existence. However, being aware of my own existence expropriates the people I love. After all, it is better not to point out the distinction of my own. I should be there and not be there at the same time. I use the term, should, for the emphasis of my own interests. Sometimes I really wish I could just disappear, a suicide probably. Who would be my savior in this dead silence? I hear Thoreau’s voice.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."

"I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear, that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which mind travels."**

He means to point out the deep ruts of tradition and conformity. I magnify it as a life principle, or perhaps it is just a way of helping me to turn my head away from the darkness.

** Henry D. Thoreau, Walden.
** Painting by Edouard Manet