本の水にあらず

Je rentre à la maison (I'm Going Home, in French, 2003)

An aging but well-regarded actor loses his close family members to a car accident and now lives with his orphaned grandson. He goes to the same cafe in Paris and sits at the same table everyday drinking the same kind of coffee. After he leaves, another man comes in and sits at the same table reading the same newspaper, everyday.

I was surfing on Amazon.com yesterday and came across a book with an interesting premise--what would the world be like when humans have gone extinct. Time marches on--it is only our egos that are too stubborn to keep apacewith it. We tend to hold on to things dearly without ever realizing it was never ours. There is a fine line that separates determination and persistence, on the one hand, and foolish stubbornness, on the other.

The actor accepts a new role, only to walk out of the set, frustrated by his own inability to recite the lines. He buys a new pair of shoes and feel good about it, only to lose them to a robber. We cannot have what does not belong to us, and if we are blind to that aspect of life, we would only be swimming in a tiny pool of our own illusion.