10-Jan-2006

The Wise Man sent me this quote this morning, and, while I find it a tad pretentious in an endearing Hitchcock way, I've been pondering it, mainly because it complements nicely a speech by The Misfit in the Flannery O'Connor short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" (I was reading it yesterday). The Misfit is talking about the first cell they put him in in the penitentiary (he's a serial killer), saying, "Turn to the right, it was a wall.  Turn to the left, it was a wall.  Look up it was a ceiling, look down it was a floor."  What he's really talking about, of course, is the distinct lack of free will in his life.  So I began to think, what is the ideal situation?  Free will, inhibited by the delineations of good and evil, the definitions
of which are mediocre at best, with infinite choices and the impossibility of satisfaction, or the jail cell, with a fixed course of action about which one never has to have a conscience, because said actions are predetermined by lack of choice?  Free will can be overwhelming and exhausting; lack of choice stifling.  So I choose to answer my own question with a Hemingway quote:  "Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know." 

And none of this has helped me solve my original predicament.  Baked Doritos or Cheez-its?  Fucking free will...