‘What does it mean to be a human being?’ I wonder glumly. I’m glum because I have the feeling that I’m not doing a very good job at it of it. Well, it’s more than just ‘a feeling’ it’s a deep pervasive knowledge. It’s a deep pervasive knowledge that I am in fact doing a very bad job at it. What am I doing wrong, I wonder? What could I do differently? You see how ridiculous these questions are, of course. As if anything like this could be fixed simply by ‘doing something differently’. If only things could be as simple as this! ‘Oh you just want to do this’ people say. ‘Oh you should stop doing that’. They talk about ‘the ten habits of happy people’! What a joke, what a laugh. Just do something differently! People are so very stupid, aren’t they? So frighteningly stupid. They’ll talk and they’ll talk and they’ll never say anything. They’ll talk for all the world as if the very act of talking itself is enough to make a difference, never mind what it is that they are actually saying. Who cares about that, anyway? If you start worrying about what people are actually saying, then you’re in deep shit! You’re alienated from the human race then, as I am… There’s a gulf between what people say and actual reality – an insurmountable gulf. You don’t want to do this, they say. You just want to do that. Then everything will be okay. You just have to ‘do the thing’. The self-help section in every bookshop is full of books telling you what ‘the thing’ is that you need to do. This great, great thing. The ‘special thing’. That the author is discovered and is now going to tell you about! It’s frightening, isn’t it? I wonder why it is that no one can see that when you are very, very lost, so lost that you no longer know what you doing or why, so lost that you no longer know what it means to be human being, then it isn’t by any means a matter of ‘what you do’. To say that ‘doing is overrated’ is missing the point by several million miles. ‘Doing’ is the very problem itself. You are your doing, did you ever realise that? Or what you are doing is you – whichever way round you want to put it. There is no difference, there is no separation. So when you’re completely and utterly lost then it doesn’t matter WHAT you do; it doesn’t matter what you do because all your options are only just ‘you’ anyway. All your so-called ‘options’ are only just you, so what are you going to do? Please tell me. Go on, tell me. Do tell me. All you have to do is this, all you have to do is that, isn’t that it. Go one. Tell me about it… That way you won’t have to see through yourself, that way you won’t have to see through your own blabbering idiocy. That way you can order to extend your ‘idiot-hood’ ahead of you forever wherever you go – isn’t that what it’s all about? But in that case I’m doing a pretty good job, I’d say. I’m extending the sphere of my personal idiot-hood in all directions – I have created a world of myself and I inhabit that world. Unhappily perhaps but nevertheless I do inhabit it. I’m hanging out there, passing the time. Shooting the shit. Does that sound fun to you? Does that sound like I’m having a good time? I suppose I am having a good time – if you can ignore the deep pervasive sense that I have of screwing everything up, of being a complete fuck-up. If you discount all that, well then I’m having a whale of a time! I’m having the time of my life. Talking bullshit to myself all day long. The way that you do…