Bodies Electric

p. 348

“The great German philosopher Schopenhauer wrote the following, which I read as a college student and have remembered ever since: ‘In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theater before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen.’ . . . I would add . . .that even as adults, studying the world, working the odds as well as we can, acting with the best part of hope and charity, we do not know what torments await us. . . . More to the point . . .–to insert the rigid steel needle of truth into the marrow of happiness–I did not know how I would torment others. It is our crimes against others that burn most perfectly in our souls year after year.”