66. Excerpt from Anthony Stephens’ Mood Journal

January 29 2005,

Morning: 6 out of 10

Afternoon: 2 out of10

Evening: 4 out of 10

I read this thing for homework tonight about the late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century philosopher George Santayana, the guy who came up with the quote “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

To me, I’ll give Santayana credit for being one of the most observant people in history. But I also think the dude was a fucking instigator. Without him, no way would I have been sitting in Dr. Silver’s chair today balling my eyes out over a mother who’s already dead three years now.

Before everybody jumped on the psychological bandwagon, people seemed to be just fine going about their lives making the same damn mistakes their parents did.

But then you’ve got guys like Santayana and Freud and Pavlov who come along with their theories and suddenly people aren’t okay with their lives the way they are.

Suddenly people are sitting on couches trying to figure out why they’re having dreams about their zombie parents.

Suddenly people are trying to figure out why they feel guilty for their mom’s death and why they don’t remember their father the way he actually looks when he left at an age when they should be able to remember everything and why they feel the same urges now that their father did then, the urge to leave anybody and anything that gets close enough to possibly fuck him over.

I don’t know the answers to these questions. And I don’t want to know.

Some people think this stuff is beneficial to individuals, to society. That knowing more about ourselves as humans is a step in the right direction.

But I feel like people were a lot happier just coping back in the day.

If all you ever have in life are breakthroughs then—in the end—aren’t you just living a broken life?

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