It is evident how adjusted man already is: the moment he is released from the fear of death he is once again seized by every possible little passion and desire, and that system of human relations again comes into its own; this is the system of sympathies and antipathies, loves and hatreds, striving to achieve every sort of goal, in a word, all that which is called and from which is formed the fabric of our everyday life.
And we forget the moments of terror we lived through, forget the inevitable, supposing that things will continue this way eternally, and we need to act, to achieve, to strengthen, to push, to press on… And what of happiness? All of life, but particularly in youth, I suffered from unsatisfied passions, from ill-fated love affairs, since the girls I loved didn’t love me and the girls who loved me weren’t loved by me. It’s not worth discussing this. I suffered from consciousness of the impotence of my talent, from my lack of a visual memory, which is as necessary for an artist as perfect pitch is for a musician. I suffered from professional ineptitude, from never-ending doubt of my abilities, from dissatisfaction with my appearance. I suffered from doubt in my choice of a profession, of a path. There were periods when I tossed painting aside for several years and thought myself an actor at times, a poet at others. Something was always lacking. I never experienced the calm, joyful state that is obviously called happiness. And then I posed a question to myself: when had I been happy, even just slightly, just for a little while. Perhaps when, for the first time, sitting in a darkened movie theater, I touched the hand of the red-haired girl who, in the end, married someone other than me. Or when I first read Villon and Baudelaire’s poetry and was filled with admiration for them. Or when I first managed to write a short little poem…
