Floating the Sea of Ignorance

The Universe of Facts is fixed by this creaking, leaky bark of flesh, floating wherever the primordial breeze and the immortal wave will take it; but feeling this motion, and the sights, sometimes novel, by which it takes us, and exhilarated by the dramatic sea spray of life, we're puffed up with visions of our Mast of Logic which holds up the Sail of Reason catching the breeze of Truth, with enlightened self-interest at the Rudder; but this stupendous scene, upon which society today depends, is a dream as fanciful as it is entrancing, holding our peculiar civilization together under its fecund spell; and the difference between this somnambulist civilization and those many of the past, what lifts us up out of the sad patterns of history up into tragedy, is only that we know enough to know better.

"Catharsis Through Exhaustion"

Isn't this precisely the coming to rest that is maturity: "The best [he] could hope for was to achieve 'catharsis through exhaustion,' where battling against the unshakable realities of the world and the self becomes just too tiring to carry on with, leading to a kind of acceptance that's not always easy to distinguish from, say, completely giving up."
From a NYRB review of Tim Parks' 'Sex is Forbidden' (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jan/09/fascinating-fearless-distinctly-odd/)

The fundamental character of adult life is just this, a kind of acceptance not easily distinguishable from completely giving up. Reminding ourselves again and again of this is our only hope for rekindling lost immaturity and its cursed questions.

On Method

some are following a path
and others are wandering the fields.
one will never find
because he does not seek,
and the other will remain forever a wanderer.
which
is which?