I Follow The Follower

Sometimes, I don’t so something for the purpose of not having done something I might have done.

Then, it seems, I’ve taken a stand for doing nothing, and doing nothing has the effect of making me feel happier than had I taken a stand for doing something.

Having done nothing, I rise and stand on my own two feet, feeling both a little bit superior to those beneath me and a little bit inferior to those above me.

Superiority and inferiority are the two poles of my life, lodestars, one star at the top and one star at the bottom. I follow each star equally, each in my own way. I’ve come to believe this method of following is unique to me.

I am a follower, the only true follower I know! Other followers may claim to be leaders but they’re following a false doctrine—the doctrine of having done something, standing up for a principle they believed in, clapping their hands after hearing an important speech, sighing like a songbird who’s just heard a poem read by the great poet, or the man or woman looking at the very important painting in the museum and saying, sotto voce, “it’s a masterpiece”!

The masterpiece I refer to is mine. It’s always hanging over me, hung at such a height that the great painting, the masterpiece, might fall and crucify me, or fall on another innocent like me who’s looking up at the great painting at the wrong time.