He has to find something to do with the hours that occur
between sleeping. Sleep—blessed sleep—is
already spoken for. He does not have to
wonder what he will do when he sleeps because . . . he sleeps, and that is
enough. But it is not enough for the
daytime hours. Something must be “done”
in those hours or he will find his sanity slipping away.
So he structures his days. He rises at a certain time. He works, he eats, he plays, he cares for
himself, he interacts with others. And
if he has “done well” on any particular day, he has “earned” a good night’s
sleep, at which time he can once again forget about the structure of it all. Until the next day. Even if his days were filled with one fun
event after the next, eventually he would grow bored of the “fun” events and
wonder how he should structure his days.
He has to fill his hours with something so that he does
not have to think about who he is or where he comes from or where he is
going. He has to stay busy, stay
occupied, stay entertained. He must do
something—anything—to keep his mind from dwelling on its own existence.
Because if he were to do that, the whole façade of the
world would instantly melt away like cotton candy when touched by water. The sweetness would immediately shrink to
nothing more than a few grains of sugar, and all of that “something” would end
up being the “nothing” it always was. And
then he would have to live—to truly live—and that would be frightening, indeed.
The birds and the animals and the insects of the forest,
after working for their food for the day, find themselves in blinding joy for
the remainder of their waking hours, filling the time with existence. How they can bear such terrifying
circumstances is a mystery man ponders as he climbs into bed. “I will think about it tomorrow,” he says to
himself.
