I have always wondered at the passion many people feel to meet the celebrated.

Tuesday, 20. September 2005, 14:52:23

I have always wondered at the passion many people feel to meet the celebrated. The prestige they acquire by being able to tell their friends that they know the famous, prove only that they are themselves of small account. The celebrated develop a technique to deal with the person they come across. They show the world a mask, often an impressive one, but take care to conceal their real selves. They play the part that is expected from them and with practice they learn to play it very well. But you are stupid if you think that this public performance of theirs correspond with the man within.

I too have been attached, deeply attached to a few people. But I have been interested in men & women in general and not for their own sakes. I have always found myself more comfortable with the obscure than with the famous, for they are more often themselves. They have had no need to create a figure to protect themselves from the world to impress it. They display their oddities because it has never struck them that they are odd.

I am often reminded by myself that I am of no consequence whatever. It would have made little difference if I had never existed. But every thing I say here is merely an opinion of my own. And it is also true that I do not scribe to convince anybody from these texts. Nor do I intend to make readers out of this. I do not much care if people agree with me. But of course I think I am right, otherwise I will not write all this.

It is really a wonder that I haven’t dropped al my ideas because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion hypocrisy and false vanity. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart, they are rational. It is only their hunger for impression that makes them irrational.

PRASOON