“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 the 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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