20160705 pathway

What I found most convincing in "The Monsters in my Head" was the use of metaphors for the overall issue of trials and emotional turmoil as the monsters we face in different phases of our lives. It was best put in sentences such as; "He became a wild bear at the foot of my bed. Then, later, an amorphous flying object swooping over my head. In later years, he was my first day at kindergarten, the agony of my early attempts at the diving board." and "Still later, my first date, my first night away from home, at sixteen, alone in a small boardinghouse as an apprentice in summer stock. The first woman to say no, the first woman to say yes. And then, he became my ambition, my fear of failure, struggles with success, marriage, husbandhood, fatherhood." This essay brought me back to my own frights that I felt I had no control over. Slowly all of the monsters have disappeared, except for one, and that is the underlying sadness that accompanies all existence.