How could I have missed it?! And you! How dare you write me off as a madman for what you think you saw. It’s not that I was intentionally tearing the skin from my body with that towel. Aye, I thought I was merely drying myself as all others do. Nothing you taught me hinted at the fact that towels do the drying. You made it seem that this was something I myself was responsible to accomplish.

What a discovery I have made! Such a beautifully organized world this turns out to be! The preordained physical properties of my precious towel make it so that all I need do is touch that blessed object gently to my skin — drag just a bit — and the drying happens magically. By itself!!! Your eyes tell me that you think me foolish for not knowing this until today. How dare you hold yourself blameless! Why did you deny me the truth for so long?

And what’s this? A knife too? Indeed it is so! The knife cuts when placed with just the slightest force on that which is to be cut. Be it steak, bone, wrist or throat. The sharpness of the knife, like the absorbancy of the towel, requires only minor participation and cooperation from me in order to do its job. And how much else in the world works this way? What other facts of worldly functionality have escaped my introspection until this day?

Oh what a fool I have been! I have been working too hard for so very long. Unbeknownst to my struggling, striving soul, this world is set before me in such a way as to require so little of me. Gentle participation alone would have taken me so far. Why did I not know the power of simple acknowledgement and sensible use of the properties of the material world? I exerted myself so forcefully all these painful years. And for what? The world does not require fevered exertion from me. I need no longer play the ferocious slayer nor the relentless defender. Oh what joyful relief! Rest is at long last a possibility.

But it is not yet time for rest. For I have been grossly wronged — by you and by the others. Why was I not told that my true responsibility is but gentle effort, persistent willingness, sensible use of self and object? You and they have denied me vital, vital information. What a dear and painful price I have paid for your omission. Be they acts of neglect of or conspired viciousness, you shall not have them for nothing. What a fool I have let you shape me into indeed. What a mad mad of pain and now wrath you have created. Woe to you that denied me the truth and set me on this frenzied course. Woe to you indeed!!