Anyway, I'm reading Robinson Crusoe again. Now that I understand the language better, I remember why I loved it in the first place. The adventures he faces throughout the book would have any kid, or grown man, tossing aside the Playstation controllers and wishing he had set sail on an ocean voyage. Imagination really is better than computer graphics anyday.
The story goes that Robinson is a young kid who dreams of setting off on the seas, even against his father's adament warnings of falling into a life of misery and wandering. He runs off anyway and on his first voyage encounters a storm that has him begging for home and swearing off the seafaring life forever. But as is so often the case, once the sting of fear wears off he looks for another ship to board. I'll stop there in case you haven't read it. That's enough information to make my point.
I ran across this quote from the book that I actually remembered from the last time I read it, which was probably in my very early twenties. Oh, if I had only taken it to heart then. It quite possibly could have saved me much heartache. But here it is anyway. Crusoe is struggling between returning home or returning to the seas.
As to going home, shame opposed the best motions that offered to my thoughts; and it immediately occurred to me how I should be laughed at among the neighbours, and should be ashamed to see, not my father and mother only, but even everybody else; from whence I have often since observed how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases, that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which only can make them be esteemed wise men.
Pride is an ugly little booger.
