#alittledramatic

03/01/15

There are wastrels and wastrels. There are wastrels who filch the golden hours because they are idle, cowardly, and vicious. If you think right you may number me among these. But there are others, idle in spite of themselves, consumed by a passionate desire for action, who do nothing because they cannot do anything, because they have no tools to work with, and because they are hemmed in by circumstances. People like this do not even know what they could do, they only feel instinctively: I am good for something, I have a right to live, I know I could be different from my present self. What purpose could I serve, how be of use? There is something serviceable in me. What is it? These idlers are quite different, and if you think it right you may number me among these. A bird in a cage in spring-time knows well that there is some function he could perform, something he could do, yet he cannot do it. What can it be? He cannot remember exactly. He says to himself that other birds are building their nests and feeding their young. He beats out his brain against the wires of his cage, but the cage remains and the bird goes mad with anguish. Look at the wastrel, say all the birds that flutter past, look at him! The prisoner is kept alive. There is no external evidence of what goes on within him. He is well and more or less merry when the sun shines. Times change, and he gets fits of despair. The children who clean out his cage think that he has everything he needs, but the bird looks at the storm-laden sky and revolts against his fate. I am cooped up in a cage and lack nothing, you idiots!...