experience

'But I'm getting off the point. The point is, you came to ask me about something that really is important. So why be ashamed and deny it? You see, I know you through and through. I know exactly what you want. You want me to tell you what I know --

'Oh, Kenneth, Kenneth, believe me - there's nothing I'd rather do! I want like hell to tell you. But I can't. I quite literally can't. Because, don't you see, what I know is what I am? And I can't tell you that. You have to find it out for yourself. I'm like a book you have to read. A book can't read itself to you. It doesn't even know what it's about. I don't know what I'm about --

'You could know what I'm about. You could. But you can't be bothered to. Look - you're the only boy I ever met on that campus I really believe could. That's what makes it so tragically futile.

Christoper Isherwood, "A Single Man", p144, Vintage Books, London, 1964 (2010).

---

So desperately wanting to pass on experience to those around us, especially our children, those closest to us, those that we feel for. And yet can't. There is no reading of the book. No time to be had, just to read. Lives to be led, experiences to be had, to write one's own book, no reading of someone else's. The need and the tragedy of unrequited desire. The futility - on and on.