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15 October 1922

Select Hotel, Place de la Sorbonne, Paris

About doing operations on yourself I know just what you mean. Its as though one were the sport of circumstance - one is, indeed. Now happy - now unhappy, now fearful, now confident, just as the pendulum swings. You see one can control nothing if one isn't conscious of a purpose - its like a journey without a goal. There is nothing that makes you ignore some things, accept others, order others, submit to others. For there is no reason why A should be more important than B. So there one is - involved beyond words - feeling the next minute I may be bowled over or struck all of a heap. I know nothing.
This is to me a very terrible state of affairs. Because its the cause of all the unhappiness (the secret profound unhappiness) in my life. But I mean to escape and to try to live differently. It isn't easy. But is the other state easy? And I do believe with all my being that if one can break through the circle one finds "my burden is light". [To J. M. Murry, 14 October 1922.]