One Hundred and Thirty Six

Einstein supposedly said doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results, is the definition of insanity. He didn’t say it, but he should have, because not only is it a good definition of insanity; it’s a good definition of life. 

Silenus supposedly said it’s better to die young, but best is never to be born. He didn’t say it, but many have.

When we set out on life’s journey, we think we won’t make the same mistakes those who came before us made; but eventually we realize we’ve made exactly the same mistakes. Those of us who haven’t, made different mistakes. Living is the first mistake, and it leads to others.

I listened to Scheherazade today. It has only a few melodies, repeated over and over again, and it’s popular for that reason. We're limited beings who can hold only a few ideas in our minds at any one time. We forget them, and then we remember them. Thinking they're new, we repeat the same ideas over and over again in different words.

Shah Riah thinks his wife loves him as he loves her. When he discovers she’s been unfaithful, he has her killed. Believing all women are the same, the shah marries a different woman each night and has her killed in the morning, before she can be unfaithful. Until he marries Scheherazade.

She tells him a different story each night, and tells it so well that each morning the shah lets her live another day so that she can tell him how the story ends that night.

But it’s always the same story, repeated over and over again in different words; and it always ends the same way. The hero always triumphs, always wins a woman who loves him as he loves her; and they live happily ever after.

The shah listens to this story each night, as a child listens to a favorite bedtime story, because he wants to go to sleep and dream of love.

All men are misogynists; but it’s not just women they distrust. We all set out on life’s journey thinking the world loves us as we love it; and we all discover that the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.

No one wants to live knowing this. Like Shah Riah, we want to kill the world we loved for betraying us; or else kill ourselves. But most of us do neither. We just go back to sleep.