Motivation.

I think it's thoroughly excellent that no person can ever truly know someone else. Really, why would you want anyone, even someone you love/respect/trust/etc. to be able to understand exactly why a certain piece of music, or a passage from a literary work, or nothing at all, strikes you the way it does? It's nice to know another person more or less feels the way you do about something, but I find almost repellent the idea of them knowing perfectly why and how you feel a certain way. Call it selfishness, pride, whatever, but what's mine is mine, and what's yours is yours.

I've said for years, usually to myself but not always, that I'm not terribly interested in people's motivations. Perhaps it's because I'm intellectually lazy (which I definitely am), or perhaps it's because I'm adverse to speaking for anyone but myself when it comes to the internal life, but whatever the case, I tend to focus on action (or lack thereof) rather than motivation. Maybe it's that most folks' motivations are boring and insipid? This is statistically likely, coming from the admittedly arrogant and demanding point of view of yours truly, but when dealing with the motivations of exciting, intelligent types, I still can't get too worked up. Let me see what's done in response to your motivations, and then I'll have something to say.

Possibly the only person's motivations that interest me (in a goddamned depressing way) are Nat's, because the action that sprang forth from them was so heinous, so jarring, so final. I cannot make any statements resembling definitive ones, though I think I understand why she did what she did. If I'm wrong, then please don't tell me if you know the truth. Not for a long while, at least. My point is that I reckon I've never dealt with such a concrete relationship between motivation and action, and certainly not one that's so troubling.

I guess I'm just thinking about my own motivations in life. I don't know if I have any, really; not the usual ones, that's for sure. I expect to leave this world with nothing save love, given and received, and I reckon that's all I truly want in the long run. I'm not thrilled by success, fame, wealth, et cetera. Nice, maybe, but not my reasons for doing what little it is I do. I'm here to do my best at being a human being, and trying to help others do the same. Everything else- hell, everything, sometimes- is an exercise in futility.

For the time being, I think I'm doing a decent job of coping with that notion.

Pardon the incohesion,
D.A.S.