One Hundred and Ninety Nine

Writing is self-indulgent.

Speaking is self-indulgent.  It would be naïve of me to think anything I could say would be of interest to anyone else; but writing down what I have to say, as though it had lasting interest to others, would be even more self-indulgent.

Not because I’ve learned nothing during my long life.  Each of us learns something no one else does, no matter how long or short our lives, because we all live different lives.  But it’s difficult for us to learn from others when we pretend we’re all the same.

Ours is an ignorant age because we don’t listen to others hoping to learn from them what they’ve learned.  We listen to them to confirm that we’re all alike, that they know what we know and there’s nothing more to know.

But I don’t write for others.  I write only for myself, trying to make sense of my life and writing down what I’ve learned before I forget it.  Because I’m old and forgetful.  When I read something I wrote when I was young, I’m awed by how much wiser I was then than I am now.

I write for myself because it’s the only way to tell the truth to someone who’ll listen.  Few people in this ignorant age tell the truth, to each other or to themselves, because they fear that if they did they’d kill each other and/or themselves out of despair at what they’ve done and what fools they’ve been.

But they know the truth.  They have to know it, in order to know what to forget.