What makes men tire?
Is it the impious consideration of whether it is nobler to kill one human person instead of two, when alternatives do not avail? Not really a hard problem - this is second semester's fare in an undergraduate's academic program. After a while, you don't think too much of pressing the button.
Of late I've spent much time driving. It's a sobering experience, knowing that at any point you have the freedom to hurl a ton of metal at any of a thousand pedestrians. Sobering, but it's not enough to make one squeamish.
The latter is closer to the entertainment of desperate cries for compliance to the multitude of uncontracted obligations that people on the street expect of each other in those graphs they call their lives. Cries many of us grew up drenched in - whiny, tinny, cries for the satisfaction of mediocre aspirations.
I try to find a thought that makes me truly squeamish. As I drive home, a few cars race by at speed. I drive an old, slow car. I wonder, if a person is trapped in a car, just beginning to have its petrol burning on the seats, pinned by a limb. If I had no tools, would I leave them screaming, or would I break their limb, tear through their flesh with fingers and teeth, fight their efforts to claw me off their body, drag their tattered body for life beyond the flames. Have you handled steak? Meat does not yield easily. Now this troubles me.
This makes me tire.
Amidst the worlds that shape our lives, we all have simpler tasks to do. Floors to sweep, bills to pay, mouths to feed, keys to press, notes to takes, etc. Etc. Et al.
A quiet night, makes for rest to return to ploughing. Another night, another day.
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