“The Human Condition: A
User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst
30 March
Imagine this: you’re a high
school senior. You just finished class in your favorite subject. It makes no
difference what that subject is: biology, woodwork, you name it. But that
subject is what you have pursued as a career ever since. In fact, your
contentment in that career is a major reason you’re content with life in
general. Actually, all that is true because a few minutes earlier in this
particular class, just as the bell rang, you said something of preternatural
brilliance, something that represented a quantum leap of creativity, something
so earth-shaking that the earth itself STOPPED its God-ordained rotation. You
were dimly aware that other kids, packing up to go to their next class, were casting
furtive glances at you as if you had just walked on water and had only just now
landed back on solid ground. Then you saw your teacher seemingly floating in
s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n toward you. He stopped
right in front of you, then, taking both your shoulders in his hands looked you
straight in the eye, and said, “That was simply brilliant. You’re really good
at this, aren’t you?” And with all the pristine innocence, all the blossoming
shyness of which the teen years are abundantly endowed, you looked back and
said, a little awkwardly, “REALLY?!?”
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