and thus i have given myself to my own failures , something i do exceedingly well , caring , but never rectifying the tendency to do as little toil as i can , defying the conditioning to believe that from intense labor there will be the financial resources to sustain myself during retirement ( men , if anything , are prisoners of war in their own right , albeit salaried ones , forced to build tracks along the bridge over the river kwai to the future , securing resources for their wives and financial means of cremation and interment for themselves in early deaths ) .