“Perhaps we are still discovering the domain of our invention just here, the domain where even we can still be original, probably as parodists of the world’s history and as God’s Merry-Andrews.”

I remember a winter in Turin when I sought to dress my thoughts in the heavy robes of Schopenhauer, believing those dark costumes would finally fit my soul. They did not. Instead, I found myself shivering in a room filled with other men trying on Christian humility and Aristotelian logic, none of which touched the skin beneath. The cost was silence; I spoke only to echo others, terrified that without these borrowed skins, I had nothing left but the naked, terrifying truth of my own becoming. I saw then how easily we mistake a mask for a face, believing that if we wear enough history, we will cease to be merely plebeian and ugly.

Now, do not look for a new costume to hide your inadequacies. When you feel the desperation of having nothing suit you, laugh at the world instead. Be the parodist who exposes the folly of all these serious faces. Ask yourself if your laughter is strong enough to carry you forward when every other style fails. If you cannot invent a new way to be human, then let your ridicule be the only thing that remains, for perhaps in this supreme folly lies the only future we possess.