The memory of having sat at someone’s feet will later make you want to trample him underfoot. I’m trying to fend off your admiration for me, you see, in order to save myself from your future contempt. I prefer to put up with my present state of loneliness rather than suffer more loneliness later. We who are born into this age of freedom and independence and the self must undergo this loneliness. It’s the price we pay for these times of ours.
Sōseki Natsume, Kokoro
betrayal, delayed-gratification, ego, existentialism, individual, japan, loneliness, meiji, modernism, psychological, self, shadow