I wish I could write like Yann Martel. He waits until you're so comfortably involved in his book to tip you over, uproot you, leaving you strangled and squinting and re-thinking every concept and theme you had thus put together. I finished Self last night. It was the most erotic piece of literature I've ever read, and should probably have age limitations in bold somewhere, but once I had read it all I got what I perceive to be his concept, his point, and haven't stopped thinking about it. It effected me so deeply that as I had almost finished it in the break-room at work, I came back down defeated, unsmiling, sad. Every human being that I had once looked at, individually, as a person who tries to be good, not even to do good, but at least to be good, to a disgusting mess of genetic behavior that I am related to. People who take advantage of one another. Men who delight in violence. Women who neglect. Children who push each-other to suicide. And as I beep, beep, beeped UPCs under the red laser-light gazing down I no longer felt like looking anyone in the eye, anyone who might have mistreated someone else that day or tomorrow.

It began to wear off, lift off, un-clench, as all things do. What once was terror becomes memory, past, normal, something-I-can't-do-anything-about-so-stop-talking-about-it, easier to shake off. Not that I'm saying it's better to hold on to these things. To hold on to the vomit-educing behaviors of humanity that DO exist and are near produces fear and apathy -- that I could be mistaken for that -- that I could be that -- that I am that.

If I wasn't born with a good sense of self-efficacy, or esteem, at least I was born with empathy.