Don’t You Miss Me?

Julián Carrón - In collaboration with paginasdigital.es, publishes the text of a meeting in which Julián Carrón dialogues with a group of friends who spent a few days of vacation in Galicia.

The other day I was talking with some friends about something that often happens to me: after a good meeting - a vacation, a dinner -, after a few hours, sometimes days and even weeks, there is a moment when I find myself full of loneliness, I feel again a final sadness.

It is often in the background. From this pain, I ask you a question: first, I am interested in whether you experience it; whether, despite the life you have, you experience this ultimate loneliness and, if you do, how you experience it.I'm also wondering if it's possible to reach a moment in life when we can experience a fullness that definitely tears us away from this loneliness, even when we are physically alone and in any circumstance of life.

Julián Carrón: Yes, I experience this loneliness and this sadness. The fundamental question is how each of us perceives this loneliness and this sadness. When I listen to you, for you these experiences are a misfortune and a sorrow; for me, on the other hand, they are an opportunity to recognize what is my greatness, what is the nature of my self, of the desire that constitutes me down to the core of my self. That is why, for me, this sadness and loneliness are the deepest expression of my self. It is what makes me understand, as Giussani says, that sadness is the sign of an absent good and loneliness can become the recognition of an original Presence. For us, most of the time, these words are incomprehensible or abstract. Instead, this deep experience of our person is a sign of how the Mystery has made us. It has made us so great, so desirous of something infinite that, as Leopardi says, everything is too little and too small for the soul's capacity, and that is why something is always missing. Is this lack of something, this unfulfilled desire, a sign that we are badly made or is it a sign of what the Mystery made us for?

So when I miss it, when I feel this sadness or loneliness, it is as if the Mystery, from within, from the bowels of experience, is asking me: but don't you miss me? I often use the example of nostalgia. Nostalgia appears as a misfortune to many, but who would want a love without the nostalgia of continually returning to it? Such a love would be a contradiction, because it would mean that something to be nostalgic about has not happened to us. This experience shows how radically different what happened is from anything else.

If we do not understand the most basic things in life, we will not be able to understand ourselves. Deep down we will always dream of a kind of human experience in which something can be enough for us, in which something can erase this longing. We will not be able to understand ourselves, because at this level the most radically human things are at stake. But, above all, we will never be able to understand Christ. For Christ offers himself as the answer to this sadness and loneliness. Notice how Jesus looks at this sadness and loneliness, what a difference in his gaze: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst [for this fullness], for they alone will be filled” (Mt 5:6). Jesus calls these people “blessed,” happy, because only those who hunger and thirst will be able to discover who Christ is.

Otherwise, we can exchange Christ for any of the images we make of life and then we will be disappointed. Christ enters life, enters history, to respond to this hunger and thirst. Yesterday's Gospel is an example of this. Hunger is the image that the Bible uses, the human experience from which Jesus starts, to constantly open the waiting for Him. That is why Jesus is not content to give them bread to satisfy their hunger. He realizes that this bread is not enough: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you” (Jn. 6:53). And this is a path that he offers and that each of us can walk. In this regard, I am always moved by the thought of Peter. He had met Jesus, had been fascinated by him to the point of leaving his nets to follow him, and at some point in his relationship with him, he asked him, “Behold, we have left everything and followed you; what shall we have therefore?” (Mt 19:27).

I am already amazed by the question itself, because if Peter, who lives daily with Jesus, does not understand in his experience that living with Him is the newness of life, what else can convince him? That is why Jesus repeats to him: whoever follows me “will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life” (Mt 19:29). Eternal life already begins here, as a sign of the hundredfold. When things get tough, after the multiplication of the loaves and the fact that everyone abandons Jesus because he raises the level of challenge (“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me and I in him,” Jn. 6:56), Jesus insists before Peter and spares him nothing: “But [you,] do you also want to leave?” It is at that moment that we see the path Peter has taken. He moves from the question, “What will we receive in return if we follow you?” to the immediate answer, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life” (Jn. 6:68). Peter had to make a journey to discover that the answer to his question is contained in living with Him. If we do not understand this, we will have to wait like Peter to recognize in experience whether Jesus' promise that those who follow Him will have a hundredfold and eternal life is fulfilled, occurs in life, as Peter did. Only those who have the boldness to follow him will be able to verify it.

So, yes, I think it is possible to experience this fullness. But it is a different fullness than what we imagine. We think of it as something physical, like filling the glass until there is no more water. Instead, no, it is a fullness like that of longing for the beloved person. With the beloved person, this thirst to find and recognize him or her is always renewed. If there were a moment that was completely enough and you no longer felt the desire for that person, it would be like wiping out the whole attraction, which is precisely what you feel the desire for when you feel loneliness or sadness. The image we have of fullness is that Christ came to erase longing, sadness and loneliness. We do not realize that He came to exalt them because, when He is missing, longing, sadness and loneliness are the greatest resource to return to Him. Like the prodigal son: he goes away and at a certain point he misses his father. Understanding these things in one's own experience is the key to understanding who we are and who Christ is.

These days I am living a nauseated life. I am tired of myself, of others, and the things I have to do bore me. For the past few days, the question of why life is worth living, why the days pass by, has emerged in me with great force. I wanted to find an answer that would solve the problem and close the question. But I see it resurfacing again.Pretending that it is not there is jarring to me, preventing me from being myself in the face of circumstances. But I've tried to formulate hypotheses and none of them seem sufficient to answer.

Julián Carrón: And what does that make you discover about yourself and about reality? Because if anything was enough for you, Christ would have wasted his time and you could solve the problem of your life with whatever image of accomplishment you have. That's why I was telling you earlier that you can use this to ask: But who am I, what is the mystery of our being, which desires so much-as Leopardi said-that nothing can really fulfill it? Who am I? Because basically we wish it had made us a little less desirous, with a little less need, to manipulate our urgency in such a way as to reduce it to what we can achieve. But that doesn't matter to me, because the path I have been on has been precisely to realize the nature of my own self. The Mystery has made us ... St. Augustine says, “You have made us Lord for you, and our hearts will be restless until they rest in you.” If you have another hypothesis, verify it!

Verify all the images you have, like the prodigal son, verify them! Don't stand here and complain. Verify, do everything you can think of, because Christ is not afraid of any adversary. He made us of such greatness--even though we complain and think it would be better to be like dogs who are content to be dogs. What would it have cost God to create another dog, another bird? Another fish that would be content with its nature reduced to what it is? It would have cost Him nothing! But he wanted to create a being that could participate in his own fullness. That is why Christianity is only for the bold.

For those who do not give up all the needs they see vibrating in themselves. I am not interested in anything less than that. I am not interested in it because, even if it did, it would not be enough for me. Nor will it be enough for me because I will decide to look for something else. Each of us must check what happens in life each time we have looked for it elsewhere. Then one, recognizing in one's experience the greatness of one's desire, the greatness of one's humanity, uses every circumstance to return to Him. If I did not feel this, how could I feel the desire to return to Him? It is like the child. If the child did not feel all the desire of his mother, he would not return to her. On the other hand, the child does not get stuck: he can cry, feel loneliness, sadness, and what does he do? He doesn't think about it for a moment: he goes back, back, back to his mother. The only question is whether we want to be children, children who return to their Father.

It amazes me that even Jesus is surprised by God's method. The Gospel says, “I praise you, Lord of heaven and earth, for you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and revealed them to the simple” (Mt 11:25). For to the wise, to the learned, this method of God is too simple to be believed. Only the simple understand it. That everything can consist in a relationship with an Other greater than ourselves is not understood by the wise, but by the simple. God's way is too simple for the wise. And Jesus continues, “No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son wishes to reveal Him” (Mt 11:27). Jesus' whole life as a man, as a son, has been about living this relationship. He says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will comfort you” (Mt 11:28).

Where did Jesus find this consolation, this tenderness with himself? In his relationship with the Father. If we do not understand this, we do not understand life. Jesus became flesh to show us what it means to live as men and women in history. In his humanity he showed how, living everything human as we do, he made use of everything - the lilies of the field, the birds, every hair on his head - how everything speaks to him about the Father. As Guardini says, “In the experience of a great love, everything becomes an event.” Every detail of the beloved is a gift. This is the way Jesus lived. This is the life proposal he witnessed to us. Each of us can see whether, when we let him in, our hearts were moved, whether we had this impression of gratitude, of fullness, of awakening from the lethargy in which we live, and whether we could say: who is this, who is this, that even the wind and the waves obey him? Who is this that awakens my whole being? Because only one like Him makes the whole person vibrate. “Speak with authority and not as the scribes” (Mark 1:22). This is the way in which Jesus, approaching our humanity, set before us a possibility of life. As we can see, the fact that he puts it before us does not solve the drama.

He puts it before us, and now each person must respond to it: standing with the drama before this Presence, responding through every thing that happens to us, every loneliness we feel, every sadness we perceive, every inadequacy or boredom we have. I can use all this as an opportunity for relationship with Him. If everything I see does not speak to me about Him, everyone will see what experience they have of things. But that depends on each person's freedom. The fact that He has put it in front of all of us does not mean that He spares us the drama; He continually introduces it. We want a quiet life, and Jesus did not come to bring peace, calm, but war, the constant awakening of the person. That's why, as Giussani said, “I hope you will never be quiet.” It is like St. Augustine: I wish you to always live with this restlessness. If you want a quieter life, perhaps you have gone to the wrong place and need to look for another place where His Presence does not awaken drama.

In my history I have seen how in times of need, of existential and material precariousness, the Lord has always sustained me in mysterious and very creative ways. Since I came to live in Madrid with my wife almost three years ago, the evidence of this hundredfold has been even more overwhelming. Many of you here have been witnesses and protagonists of it. In Venezuela we experienced much vulnerability; I cried in front of a table without having anything to eat. Now life is more stable, basic material needs are covered and we even have some luxuries. We have great friends, we have company, we have a beautiful and healthy child. However, when I think about the elections in Venezuela, fear assails me. At the thought of saying yes again to another child, uncertainty about money and work assails me. At the thought of renewing our residency documents and that something could go wrong forcing us to return to Venezuela, I am overwhelmed with fear. I feel fragile when something threatens this sense of security. I always think: How many times do I need to see Him again so that He will determine all my attempts?How can I not lose sight of the fact that all that I am, and therefore all that I have, has been given to me? I want to feel more and more free from all these things. I know they will be there and they are inevitable, but I don't want them to weigh me down and determine me so much.

Julián Carrón: What if this is the path the Lord is making you take to get to what you are asking for? The answer to your question can only come from experience. You have already seen it in your life: you had to change countries, turn everything upside down to realize this. The problem is that we, forgetting this, can go back to where we started despite the experience we have already had, putting our security in certain things that, you see, are by nature insecure. You cannot change the situation of your country, you cannot change anything! On the other hand, no one can tear from your gut the experience you are having. And you have not come to this realization by thinking in your head, by reasoning, but in your experience. The Lord educates us in history, through history. Otherwise we would not learn. If we already struggle so much, in spite of all we see, to submit reason to experience... Like the disciples, who saw everything by living with Jesus and ask, “What will we receive in return?” Do we not realize that the only true companionship that cannot be taken from us is Him? He is the only thing that will give you the consistency to look at yourself, your wife, your daughter, to open yourself to the possibility of life. If everyone in history, in 2000 years of Christian history, had waited for the optimal conditions to have a child, we would not be here.

Think about certain times in history, such as wars, when everything was turned upside down: what was it that made the readiness to have a child possible? We live infinitely better today than we did in previous times or in times when our families lived, but we are determined by fear or insecurity.

Through these things, the Lord educates us. It is as if he is saying to us, “Don't you realize that your security, that what you seek, can only be given to you by a relationship with me?” I am always amazed at St. Paul, who was spared no hardship: the persecutions, the hunger, the thirst, the beatings inflicted on him. All this enabled him to achieve the certainty you desire: “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor the present, nor the future, nor any creature will be able to separate me from the love of Christ” (Rom. 8:38). But this does not happen by thinking of ourselves as locked in our room, but grows-as with St. Paul-through everything. The Mystery does not spare you these things, no storm, so that you can see Christ emerge in all his power and leave you speechless like the disciples. “Why are you afraid? Have you no faith yet?” (Mark 4 35). They all stand open-mouthed at the appearance of Jesus calming the sea and the waves. “But who is he, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Mt 8 27) In this sense, why am I thankful that nothing has been spared? Because if I had not had to face, as you have, so many challenges that the Mystery has not spared us, I would not have been able to see it emerge before my eyes in all its power. If Jesus had come to the lake that day and said to the winds and the sea, “Don't make a fuss, don't disturb me today, that I am here fishing with my friends,” He would have spared His disciples the storm. But would you rather have been spared the trouble, or did you prefer to see His full power emerge overcoming the waves and the sea to know who you are trusting? Thank goodness the Mystery does not listen to us in this! Otherwise, we would prevent him from showing who he is.

Going back to the prodigal son, I see it from the father's point of view. The son makes an absurd request and the father totally loves the son's freedom and lets him go. It seems to me that this is a beautiful thing. But if I put myself in the father's perspective in the situations that I experience, and I see all the suffering that the father went through because of the son's request. The question is, how can I love the freedom of the other and not censor my own suffering, my own need for justice, for meaning? I feel, because I have seen it in experience, that with someone I love it is different, but I find myself wanting it with someone I don't love as well.

Julián Carrón: The question is how we can understand each other's journey. The question is whether we make our own path by seeing how the Mystery loves our freedom and prefers, like the father in the parable, to give the inheritance to his son because he does not want slaves in the house, but sons. The father gives him everything even though he knows it is not his right, but he does not want to impose it on him. If he were to impose it on him, the son could stay at home, but angry as a beast, like the eldest son. The father loves both the truth and the son's freedom, because he knows that only if the son discovers what satisfies him through his freedom can he really convince himself that the father does not want to subject him, does not want a slave. Only the one who has this experience can understand and love the other's freedom and give time for the other to make it his own. Otherwise, it is as if we treat the other as if we think “I already know what is good for you,” “I already know who you are”; no, the other is a mystery. We don't know when and at what time he will be able to discover what is right for him, or all that he needs to discover in order to respond to his demands. If we do not give time to the other and give ourselves time in our relationship with the other so that he can discover it, deep down we will want to impose it on him. As Giussani says, even if we gave the other person the answer, it would not be enough.

I have a priest friend who, at one point, although he had found friends who had fascinated him in living his priesthood, it occurred to him that his vocation was monastic life. In spite of all the signs in front of him, in spite of the fact that up to that time nothing else had given him more certainty, more enthusiasm, more desire to live his vocation than his relationship with the people he had met, he went after the image of his life and went to a monastery. He stayed there for ten years. Ten years later he came back. It was clear from the beginning what had happened to him, but it took him ten years to check the image he had made of himself instead of going along with what he had experienced. The Mystery did not take away his freedom, it let him go like the prodigal son: verify! Ten years, you see, ten years to verify the image of fulfillment! Not even the evidence of the beginning had allowed him to recognize it. The Mystery has such tenderness for us that He says: you want to verify it, verify it! Ten years! It is impressive that even the anticipation of the answer is not convincing until it is verified. That is why we either trust the signs that the Mystery gives us or we follow its images.

The Mystery has no problem because it knows that there is a detector within us that, when used, warns that not everything matches. Therefore, it has no problem liberating us. And that is why we must not liberate the other. We must love his freedom as Christ loves it. As Péguy says, “I gave everything to be loved by free men. To be loved by free men I sacrificed everything” (Ch. Péguy, The Mystery of the Holy Innocents). He does not want slaves. He does not want submissive people. He wants free men who have the right reasons to recognize this.

I was struck by a writing by De Gasperi that I commented on at a meeting to which I was invited by a friend. In one of his letters to his wife, De Gasperi says to her (in the 1920s!), “I love you as a free companion, a friend with the same initiative and independence as mine. Nothing disgusts me more than to play the master with you - the know-it-all - and to enter your conscience” (A. Polito, The Builder. De Gasperi's five lessons to politicians, 2024). What a love for his wife's freedom! What a way to tiptoe in, to stand there on the threshold of the wife's mystery, with this sense of mystery and sacrosanct respect, as if taking off one's sandals before the mystery of the other!

Who would not want this? But how much love for the destiny of the other must each person have in order to be able to look at his wife, her husband, his friends, his father, whoever he may be, in this way, with this sense of the mystery of the other! Therefore, with the knowledge that I am not able to penetrate all the depths of this mystery and that I can only be there, waiting for the other's mystery to reveal itself and to be able to make its way to discover what fulfills it. Without this, we only create groups of know-it-alls who think they know what is best for the other person, and we replace the mystery of the other person with the plan we have for him or her. We think we know much better what is right for the other. Each person sees what is right for him.

Yesterday morning, after praise, we worked on part of the exercises. At one point I was reminded of something that had happened to me some time ago that had caused me great hurt. I could not listen to anything that was being said. I had all the will to listen, but my mind was filled with this wound, which clouded my ears and heart. I was aware that this wound on other occasions had been an asset, but yesterday morning it was blocking me completely. I wanted to listen, I wanted to live, to be present, but I realized that the wound swallowed up the reality before my eyes. Then, in the car, a friend asked me what I thought about what had been said. And I had to say truthfully that I had not listened to anything. I had to admit to myself that the hurt had prevailed. I want to live.The question I ask is, what would you have done? What do you do when these situations happen to you?

Julián Carrón: It is very interesting your question because it makes us discover how often we get stuck. It happens to me too sometimes: reading something that in another moment struck me or made me feel all the attraction, I can instead be determined by a worry, a hurt, etc. We should not be frightened by it. It happens; we are human. And therefore, nothing that is human is foreign to us. We are human even in this situation you described. But it doesn't end there because, when you recover from this, what is still left in you even in the moment when you are determined by the wound? You are still left with the duty to grasp your reason and ask yourself, is this all my life is?, is everything determined by this wound?, is this the ultimate truth of me?, is this the ultimate truth of reality?, am I condemned to live subservient to this wound?, or is there something else, as you have seen in other moments?, is there another Presence? If we don't use all these things as a resource to return to full use of reason and challenge the rationalist mode with which so many times we allow ourselves to be locked up without being able to breathe, we weaken ourselves more and more and end up perceiving reality within our own mental schema. This is part of our education.

If I had not done this every time what happens to me happens to you, I would not be here; I would have long ago taken my leave of you. On the contrary, I would not be me if I had not walked the path that every moment of life asks you to walk, just like you. From a certain moment in my life, I could no longer live without judging this kind of phenomena: but this wound, is it the last word on my life? This mistake I made, this circumstance that I was not spared, is it the ultimate truth about me? If we do not take advantage of every challenge to learn to use reason according to its nature, that is, openness to reality according to all its factors, we succumb to unbearable rationalism. Because the problem is not whether this is true, it is that the reduction with which so many times we settle is not the truth!

It is as if a person is worried that he has cancer and is afraid to go through the necessary tests to find out whether he has it or not. Either you take your doubt seriously to see if you have it, or you live determined by your worry without checking whether you really have cancer. You cannot live without judgment, you cannot live with the sword of Damocles for fear of having a positive diagnosis. What do we do in the face of this? Do we give spiritual advice, make sentimental gestures, pat ourselves on the back? What do we do? Only one thing is reasonable: check if you have cancer. And how do you know? You do all the tests possible and imaginable to see if you have it. Without these tests, we do not get rid of the worry, and even if it is unfounded, we are determined by it. As I have told you many times: we suffocate ourselves, and then we become rationalists. Whenever something like this happens, we can not be frightened, we can face the issue and judge it: is it true that I have cancer or not? Is it true that all I am is the wound I feel now? Is it true that all I am is the loneliness I feel now? Is it true that all I am is the sadness I feel now?

Because in all of these things, as I used to tell Nacho and he always tells it, I can say, “I'll give you all the factors you want, but you are not doing yourself right now, you couldn't feel the loneliness, feel the sadness, feel the wound... if an Other wasn't giving you life right now.” Therefore, to stay in the wound, to stay in the sadness, to stay in the loneliness, is to take it for granted that I do myself. The most basic thing of all-that we do not make ourselves, and therefore an Other is embracing my loneliness, an Other is embracing my woundedness, an Other is embracing my sadness-is the possibility of educating ourselves in a world where everything comes down to the measure of our reason. Not to the use of reason, but to a use of reason as the measure of everything. If I do not constantly challenge this way of using reason and educate myself to use it according to its true nature of openness to reality according to all factors, I become weaker and we replace the true use of reason with pious and pious gestures that only increase the weakness even more.

The alternative is to take the bull by the horns and use reason. Christ came to educate us to use reason; He does not want us to follow Him simply out of compassion for Him or ourselves. “Will you also leave?” (Jn. 6:67) is Jesus' challenge to Peter to look at his experience and see whether it is better to leave or to stay. Jesus' question allows Peter to look at his story, “Even if I don't understand this, do I leave or do I have a thousand reasons to stay?” If, every time such a thing happens, we waste the opportunity, we weaken ourselves more and more. We become devout Christians with reason left in the closet. Such a Christianity will never live up to our humanity and our time, because no one wants to live without being reasonable, without being free. Such a Christianity would win only at the cost of giving up the human, what is most human, that is, the need for reason, for freedom, for affection. I don't want to know anything about this Christianity. I am not interested in it. I am interested in being human, with all my humanity, with all my human need for reason, to find out whether this wound is the last word on me, whether the fear of having a tumor is well-founded or not. Do you want to live looking the other way? See if that solves the problem.

I wanted to ask you a question about something that you always insist on, and that Don Giussani told you: the need for a stable job in life. Why am I asking you this question? Because I see that you have a way of doing it that I envy, and in me I perceive a distance from the stable path that I see you taking and my own, in which many times my experience dries up, loses its initial strength and richness. I see this in two things. The first is that I relate to the things around me through appearance, but I don't get to the depth of reality, I don't get to touch the mystery, I don't get to touch that Presence that invites me, that is vibrant, that provokes me. I become fatigued. The second aspect is a pain, because seeing all the path we have been on these years with you, I have the fear of wasting it. I feel very fortunate for the path I've taken, I feel like I'm invited to a big banquet that I didn't deserve, but like I'm consuming that banquet badly, without appreciating all the dishes and everything that is put in front of me, and I don't get the full benefit of it.

Julián Carrón: about appearance, that's what we were saying before. Stopping at appearance is always the great temptation. The world we live in is a world where most people stop at appearance. That is why it seems more normal for one to stop at appearance. The problem is that we have been introduced to a way of experiencing the reality of things in which our rationalist way of living has been challenged. This is the method pointed out by Giussani: we kill our humanity and block the true use of reason if we use reason in a rationalist way and not to go beyond appearance. Therefore, we should not be discouraged. Giussani said: when one wakes up in the morning, what does one desire? We have to make the strenuous effort to go through all the tangle of thoughts, desires, worries, everything that accumulates in our head as soon as we wake up, to get to the bottom of everything, to this desire for its remembrance, its memory. This is the morning prayer; everything else is sentimental, it is devotional, but it is not praying. If you read chapter 10 of The Religious Sense, at the end of the journey that makes all reason, which before astonishment and before life comes to the point of recognizing that I am made by Another, Giussani says, “This is prayer.” We turn prayer into an alternative to the use of reason-I'm not saying you do that, but we can take that risk.

But reason is this, this is morning prayer: to go through all our thoughts, all our wounds, all our worries, all the things that weigh on our conscience. If one does not go through all this, one will eventually become entangled in appearance. One should not be discouraged! There will simply come a time when one stops wasting time because one can no longer live without using reason in this way. Then, each time it happens, it is like a banquet. I no longer want to miss this use of reason to meet with Him! It is like when you get the thought of whether or not you love your wife or husband. If you don't use that to go to the bottom - but do I love Him or don't I love Him! - and look the other way every time it happens, you don't judge Him. If we don't do this in every aspect of living, then we waste time. How to appreciate it more and more, how to appreciate more and more what has happened to us? Because whenever one exercises his being, his freedom, his reason in this way, one increases his personality. Otherwise, we become amoebas, dependent on the pim-pam-pum of circumstances. Weaker and weaker, more and more fragile. A few days ago, someone asked me: how do we know if we are walking? We see if we are learning. I have a friend who works with Elon Musk, and after each project, he asks his colleagues, “In the last three months, what have you learned?” You can see if you are walking a path when you find that you have learned something. If I asked, “You, in the last three months, what have you learned?” By answering this we can tell if we are wasting time or not. If time passes without us learning anything, then yes, we are wasting time. On the other hand, even though I still have an endless journey to go, if I keep learning, I am not wasting it, even though I still have so much left to understand. Good thing! Otherwise, eternal life would be endless boredom.

Unrevised notes and translations by the author.

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