Two Hundred and Eighty Four

I’m nearing the end of the book, just as I’m nearing the end of my life.  And what have I learned?

All we know, we knew in the beginning.  We all know that life is misery for most people most of the time.  But we make ourselves forget what we know in order to go on living, hoping our life will be different. 

The moment I knew the world, I loved it and wanted to know it better.  Even when I no longer loved it, I still wanted to know it better in order to make it better.  But I also knew that knowledge is not power.  Only power is power.  In order to know the world—to know why it is what it is, and how to change it—I'd have to become the world.  I am finite and it is infinite, so the lover’s quest for knowledge of his beloved can only end in his death.

We used to pretend that not only did we want to live, we wanted to live forever.  But we know nothing lives forever. What we pretended was a desire for immortality was in reality a desire to be nothing, to forget what we know.