Shoot!

I study people in their most ordinary occupations, to see if I can
succeed in discovering in others what I feel that I myself lack in
everything that I do: the certainty that they understand what they are
doing.

At first sight it does indeed seem as though many of them had this
certainty, from the way in which they look at and greet one another,
hurrying to and fro in pursuit of their business or their pleasure.
But afterwards, if I stop and gaze for a moment in their eyes with my
own intent and silent eyes, at once they begin to take offence. Some
of them, in fact, are so disturbed and perplexed that I have only to
keep on gazing at them for a little longer, for them to insult or
assault me.

No, go your ways in peace. This is enough for me: to know, gentlemen,
that there is nothing clear or certain to you either, not even the
little that is determined for you from time to time by the absolutely
familiar conditions in which you are living. There is a _something
more_ in everything. You do not wish or do not know how to see it. But
the moment this something more gleams in the eyes of an idle person
like myself, who has set himself to observe you, why, you become
puzzled, disturbed or irritated.

I too am acquainted with the external, that is to say the mechanical
framework of the life which keeps us clamorously and dizzily occupied
and gives us no rest. To-day, such-and-such; this and that to be done
hurrying to one place, watch in hand, so as to be in time at another.
"No, my dear fellow, thank you: I can't!" "No, really? Lucky fellow!
I must be off...." At eleven, luncheon. The paper, the house, the
office, school. ... "A fine day, worse luck! But business...."
"What's this? Ah, a funeral." We lift our hats as we pass to the man
who has made his escape. The shop, the works, the law courts....

No one has the time or the capacity to stop for a moment to consider
whether what he sees other people do, what he does himself, is really
the right thing, the thing that can give him that absolute certainty,
in which alone a man can find rest. The rest that is given us after
all the clamour and dizziness is burdened with such a load of
weariness, so stunned and deafened, that it is no longer possible for
us to snatch a moment for thought. With one hand we hold our heads,
the other we wave in a drunken sweep.

"Let us have a little amusement!"

Yes. More wearying and complicated than our work do we find the
amusements that are offered us; since from our rest we derive nothing
but an increase of weariness.

I look at the women in the street, note how they are dressed, how they
walk, the hats they wear on their heads; at the men, and the airs they
have or give themselves; I listen to their talk, their plans; and at
times it seems to me so impossible to believe in the reality of all
that I see and hear, that being incapable, on the other hand, of
believing that they are all doing it as a joke, I ask myself whether
really all this clamorous and dizzy machinery of life, which from day
to day seems to become more complicated and to move with greater
speed, has not reduced the human race to such a condition of insanity
that presently we must break out in fury and overthrow and destroy
everything. It would, perhaps, all things considered, be so much to
the good. In one respect only, though: to make a clean sweep and start
afresh.