We have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by weather, woe, or work can – if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough – be turned to account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being, what the hazards are of a fairly usual, everyday kind. We go up to Heaven and down to Hell a dozen times a day – at least, I do. And the discipline of work provides an exercise bar, as that the wild, irrational motions of the soul become formal and creative. It literally keeps one from falling on one’s face.
From Journal of a Solitude (108-9)
W. W. Norton & Company, 1973
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