20
September
“The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold
Kunst
Imagine
this: you’re a high school senior. You just finished class in your favorite
subject. It doesn’t make a 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. In fact all that is true because a few minutes earlier in this
particular class you said something of preternatural brilliance, something that
represented a quantum leap of creativity, something so earth-shaking that
everything just STOPPED. You’re dimly aware that other kids, packing up
to go to their next class, are casting furtive glances at you as if you had
just walked on water and are just now back on dry land. That’s when you see
your teacher seemingly floating in s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n toward you. He stops
right in front of you, then, taking both your shoulders in his hands looks you
straight in the eye, and says, “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 look back and say,
“REALLY?!?”
