"Since I live among the human beings here below, I cannot resolve to isolate myself completely. I do have to have dealings with other people for one reason or another. New Year greetings, business in progress, comparatively delicate problems: despite leading a secluded life I find it difficult to avoid them.
Am I to take everything people tell me literally and give their gestures and words the meaning they seem to have? If I did not give enough thought to this naive temperament that has been mine from birth, I would from time to time be duped by people from whom deceit would not be expected. I am thus dogged by constant mockeries and gibes. I the worst cases, I myself experience unbearable humiliation.
But could I then decide that other people were all arrant liars and decline from the outset to pay attention or give any credence to their words? Could I even merely assume the opposite of their words to be the truth, regarding myself as intelligent on that account and thus finding a haven of peace? I should thus risk misinterpreting other people. Furthermore, I should have to be prepared, from the outset to face the possibility of committing a frighful mistake. And the inevitable consequence of this attitude would be that sometimes I would have to be brazen enough to insult an innocent person, failing which the logic of my position would not hold up.
If I have to decide on one or the other of these attitudes, I once more find myself tormented by doubt. I do not wish to confide in anyone who is bad. But nor do i wish to cause hurt to anyone who is good. The people with whom I come in to contact are not all malicious-nor are they all good people. My attitude must therefore vary according to the people with whom I am dealing.
This variation is necessary for everybody and is also practiced by everybody. But can one really proceed along a decline uniform line where no error is permitted, in perfect accord with the other person? This, for me, is the key question.
My rancor apart, I remember, not without bitterness, how many people have deceived me in the past. At the same time, I feel that, on several occasions, instead of accepting the words and actions of the other people without thinking twice about it, I have deliberately interpreted them twice about it, I have deliberately interpreted them in such a way as to arose something akin to humiliation in the other person.
My attitude towards other people in governed in the first place by what has been my experience hitherto.
Then it is also affected by circumstances and the environment. Finally- and this is ambiguous- some little part is also played by innate intuition. Thus I am sometimes duped by other people and sometimes it is they who are duped by me, while on rarer occasions I assess them correctly.
Now when I refer to "what has been my experience hitherto", it would seem to vast and yet in reality it is very restricted. When one transposes to a certain part of society an experience that has been frequently repeated in another, it often becomes totally ineffective. I have referred to "circumstances" and to "environment", but since there are infinite variations, they are not only limited in their application but also, if one fails to take this into account, become useless. In most cases, moreover, there is neither sufficient time material available to enable these data to be taken into account.
All this induces me, when judging others, to keep my intuition to the fore, although I do not whether or not it exists, and it is any case very uncertain. Furthermore, I have not usually had opportunity of ascertaining objectively whether my intuition has discerned matters clearly or not. Here again, doubt constantly settles like a fog over my heart and causes it to suffer.
if in this world an omniscient and omnipotent god existed I would kneel down before him and ask him to endow me with an intuition so clear that not a shadow of doubt would remain and to deliver me from these torments. Or I would ask him to transform all those impenetrable people with whom I am faced into transplant and honest beings and thus to give me a happiness such that my soul and theirs would be in perfect harmony. At the moment I am so stupid that there is only one way open: I am deceived by others, and my distrust is so great that I cannot accept my fellow beings. I am at the peak of disquiet, obscurity and discomfort. If this is to persist throughout my lifetime, how unhappy I must be!"
I read again and again this essay when I cannot stand the idea of facing my psychological crises. I have much in the way of new material these days. What am I to do about my work?? My former ideas are divorced from reality, I gradually understand. I thought I would be able to make an animation film. But...
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