From Essays After Montaigne
...so is it of mindes, which except they be busied about some subject, that may bridle and keepe them under, they will here and there wildely scatter themselves through the vast field of imaginations.
The minde that hath no fixed bound, will easily loose itselfe: For, as we say, 'To be everiewhere, is to be nowhere.'
...where me thought I could doe my spirit no greater favour, than to give him the full scope of idlenesse, and entertaine him as he best pleased, and withall, to settle himselfe as he best liked: which I hoped he might now, being by time become more setled and ripe, accomplish very easily: but I finde...that contrariwise playing the skittish and loosebroken jade, he takes a hundred times more cariere and libertie unto himselfe, than hee did for others, and begets in me so many extravagant Chimeraes, and fantasticall monsters, so orderlesse, and without any reason, one hudling upon another, that at leasure to view the foolishnesse and monstrous strangenesse of them, I have begun to keepe a register of them, hoping, if I live, one day to make him ashamed, and blush at himselfe.
One day when I was about seven, just after my father moved out and before my mother rented the two bedrooms on the third floor to boarders, I came home looking for her. I worked my way through the kitchen, dining room, sun room, and living room on the first floor and up to the bedrooms on the second floor without finding her. I found her sitting in the back room on the third floor (the one with the closet in which she had installed a darkroom) crying. I put my arms around her and tried to comfort her. Right there, in that spot, at that moment, I became the person who had to make everything all right. Already working without the benefit of religion (or any other customs or culture), it became clear (to a potential qualified observer that is--I wasn't yet able to form such complex thoughts) that I wasn't going to be getting much in the way of parental or emotional guidance either.
I did very well in school (barely a day passed without a teacher calling me gifted), and I didn't cause any trouble there or at home. I didn't seem to need anything. For parents lost in their own struggles, I was the perfect child. It was at this time that I decided that I knew the broad outline of everything there was to know. I remember sitting in the passenger seat and telling my mother this as we came to a stop at the corner of Westbourne Parkway and Blue Hills Avenue. I didn't mean that I knew every fact that could be known, but that I knew how everything worked, all of the ideas, and that the facts were just something to be looked up.
There I was, a tiny seven-year-old, with this great Saint Bernard of a mind bounding hither and yon, sniffing out every corner and dragging me helplessly behind. Neither of us had the least notion of obedience, and no one else offered any assistance beyond telling me what a beautiful dog I had--except for my mother, who strangely kept telling me that the dog would bite me, without offering any insights as to how to avoid that fate. But a boy's best friend would never do anything so directly aggressive as biting him. Instead, my best friend spun down into the abyss with me in tow: Without the emotional, social, or intellectual support of parents, family, friends, community, religion, or other traditions, my mind began ceaselessly contemplating my mortality as if it were its tail. After all, here was something to know, yet it was unknowable--children of seven, no matter how bright, are unable to appreciate such ironic paradoxes. I developed an obsessive, almost debilitating fear of death by my eighth birthday.
I've spent the last twenty-five years working my way out of that darkness, much of the time with my increasingly obedient mind as my only companion. I learned the value of discipline and structure. I found that the absence of limits simply didn't work for me. The thought of a largely empty and endless universe was intolerable; there was nothing more depressing than a wide open field on a cloudless day or the merciless light in an Edward Hopper painting; and a day without anything planned was a source of deep anxiety. Rather than allowing my mind to range idly about, I found that there was great comfort in the guidance offered by structure, in more carefully following existing paths. Eventually I followed those paths back to society and was able to complete my journey with the help of the ideas, friends (one of whom became my wife), and professionals I discovered along the way.
Now I have the life that I want. I am at peace with myself, and I can enjoy the ease of idleness. Just this afternoon, I dozed blissfully through the Liverpool-Aston Villa game without the vague panic that I was allowing myself to slide ever closer to my death. I understand in some profound way the structure of moments and how to keep my thoughts within each one while it remains.
5:57:21 PM 
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