I think of some philosopher asking Wittgenstein how he managed to live according to his own philosophy and Wittgenstein saying, the bloody hard way.
But even that's adolescent.
It's not that hard, not for us, is it?
My dad tells me I can't start from the attitude that everything has a solution. Which is an odd thing for anyone to say to me, except that I'm a completely different person with my dad. I'm all jumpy and bitey and impatient. I don't know why. Well - all kinds of reasons - sometimes I don't want to be complicit with my dad because he's awfully nice to me but not really, not ever, to my mom, he jumps on her all the time - and I do understand his jokes, I just don't want to say, don't want to have to say, well I'm on your side - but then my mom laughs at him too, and then looks at me. I don't want to be on anyone's side! And I'm all of 6 years old again.
My dad started talking about his friend, a lawyer struggling to maintain his one-man firm, tried to build a career and so married late and now he's old but his kids are quite young and he still hasn't paid off his mortgage - talking about failure, how hard it was to start again - and oh I didn't want to hear, so started chatting very blithely about oh how his friend hadn't failed, he could still do all kinds of stuff. I hate myself when I'm with my dad. I don't want to talk about failure and the possibility of failure. I don't want to feel - compassion? because pity wouldn't be quite right, but compassion sounds too grand, far grander than anything I might feel - for my dad. I don't want, isn't that terrible?