The Writer Must Be Universal In Sympathy

...god Knows You Can Have Complication And Difficulty Without Any Compensating Depth Or Seriousness

I Certainly Believe We All Suffer Damage, One Way Or Another. How Could We Not,except In A World Of Perfect Parents, Siblings, Neighbours, Companions? And Then There Is The Question On Which So Much Depends, Of How We React To The Damage: Whether We Admit It Or Repress It,and How This Affects Our Dealings With Others.some Admit The Damage, And Try To Mitigate It;some Spend Their Lives Trying To Help Others Who Are Damaged; And There Are Those Whose Main Concern Is To Avoid Further Damage To Themselves, At Whatever Cost. And Those Are The Ones Who Are Ruthless, And The Ones To Be Careful Of.

There Is A German Word, Sehnsucht, Which Has No English Equivalent; It Means 'the Longing For Something'. It Has Romantic And Mystical Connotations; C.s. Lewis Defined It As The 'inconsolable Longing' In The Human Heart For 'we Know Not What'. It Seems Rather German To Be Able To Specify The Unspecifiable. The Longing For Something - Or, In Our Case, For Someone.

When You're Young - When I Was Young - You Want Your Emotions To Be Like The Ones You Read About In Books. You Want Them To Overturn Your Life, Create And Define A New Reality. Later, I Think, You Want Them To Do Something Milder, Something More Practical: You Want Them To Support Your Life As It Is And Has Become. You Want Them To Tell You That Things Are Ok. And Is There Anything Wrong With That?

A Couple's First Task, It Has Always Seemed To Me, Is To Solve The Problem Of Breakfast; If This Can Be Worked Out Amicably, Most Other Difficulties Can Too.