The Contradiction

Just as illnesses have an incubation period, there is an incubation period for our thoughts and feelings. Although we possess these thoughts and are controlled by these feelings during the incubation period, we remain unaware of them. And if nothing happens in the outer world to bring them to the surface of consciousness, we go on being controlled by these thoughts and feelings the rest of our lives, insisting all the while that we have never been influenced by them. We try to prove our point through actions and words that negate the thoughts and feelings, but an outsider’s view of our actions reveals the contradiction. Sometimes we are amazed to see the contradiction ourselves. Sometimes, without seeing it, we experience tremendous pain. My own suffering at the hands of the girl I mentioned earlier was caused, ultimately, by my inability to perceive what was incubating inside of me. If only we could inject some powerful medicine that would kill off these unknowable creatures before they could violate our hearts–then what contradictions, what misfortunes mankind would be spared! But things do not work out as we would wish them to, and that’s too bad for all of us.

— Natsume Soseki, The Miner (1908)