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me to want to develop that side of my brain because I want so deeply to be able to have those kinds of conversations. His lifestyle, his home, his work; everything about him, however; reminds me of the life I left behind. And I'm afraid.

I'm afraid of money, too. He didn't understand how I could think that money was poison and that I could meet a better class of people when poor. I told him that, while not necessarily being a "better class"; poor people, in my experience, tend to have more heart; they have less to give but give more, proportionately. I find that I am truer, more honest, more connected when I have to depend on others than when I am totally comfortable and self reliant. Sometimes I want to quote Nietzsche at him:

For Nietzsche, suffering is the real truth of reality. The problem with tragedy to the logically minded, within a framework of absolutes is that it "calls into question the boundaries of ethical judgment that every moralist must define or assume."[5] The process of striving to clearly define and fit everything into perfect abstract forms leaves little room for flexible judgments or moral relativism, sophistry, as it were. In his introduction to The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche queries whether the Western resolve to be so overly scientific about everything indicates fear, an avoidance of ugly reality, a certain inability to face the truth.

Nietzsche goes on to propose a society which he calls a tragic culture, where "wisdom takes the place of science as the highest end wisdom that, uninfluenced by the seductive distractions of the sciences, turns with unmoved eyes to a comprehensive view of the world, and seeks to grasp, with sympathetic feelings of love, the eternal suffering as its own."[6] I can almost hear him, and all those other logically minded types I love so much, laughing at the very idea.

But now I also want to quote the Tao:

"Give up learning and put and end to your troubles."[7] "In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired. In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less is done until non-action is achieved. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. The world is ruled by letting things take their course."[8] I've learned to slow myself down and blow things off. This is good for me. I actually get much more done this way. But how do I explain this? Lao Tsu would say that "Teaching without words and work without doing are understood by very few."[9] So perhaps I stop trying to explain.

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