The Muse on Weakness.

There are times when I feel like a ghost moving silently among the mortal, observing their processes of mind, machine, and system, and becoming ever less tolerant of all three. Is this a fault, I ask myself. Is it a self-generated artifice to hide a weakness?

‘Do you feel you can’t cope sometimes?’ asks my muse.

Yes.

‘Do you think it’s the root of your reclusive tendency?’

I suppose it might be.

‘And do you think it’s a weakness?’

I don’t know. Is it?

‘I really couldn’t say, but think on this: Is it not a fact that those who are too weak to cope alone are more likely to seek the company of others who can support them? Are they not the clingers, the ones who seek a solution through stronger friends, and healers, and medications, and support groups, and belief systems? Do you do any of those things?’

No, but does that indicate incontrovertibly that the people who do seek such solutions are weak but I’m not?

‘Not necessarily.’

And what about my suspicion that life is just a game and I’m simply growing tired of playing it?

‘You might be right.’

Might? Don’t you know?

‘Yes, but it isn’t my place to say. You have to find it out for yourself.’

And how do I do that?

‘That’s for you to find out, too.’

Oh, great. And you still haven’t answered my first question. Am I weak or not?

‘I really couldn’t say. Only you can know whether you’re weak or not.’

OK. I’d say that the one thing we can glean from all this is that muses are not here to make life easier.

(‘By the way,’ continued my muse as an afterthought, ‘since you don’t know whether you’re weak or not, you really ought to apply a degree of circumspection when you’re tempted to judge the weakness of others. Yes indeed.’)