Sunday, August 18, 2013

"latent ravening ferocity"

"...as if they got from his latent ravening ferocity not so much a sense of dependability as a feeling that his ferocious conviction in the rightness of his own actions would be of advantage to all whose interest lay with his..."

"the one weapon for the preservation of integrity, else breath were not worth the breathing, and hence to be regarded with respect and used with discretion"


Somewhere on my journey from angry young man to bitter old man confused and middle aged.  I found a lesson in this story: the idea that a bottomless rage might be controlled, carried around and used judiciously as a weapon.  I'm not sure it's actually something I've been able to apply to my life with any success, but it's at least seemed like a possibility at times when I didn't see a lot of possibilities.

The fairest way to look at it...

...is probably that it's not necessarily all my fault.  But that it's not entirely within my control, either.