Resources » KM Today Blog » 15 Mar 1922
15 March 1922
Dear Ida
I have just received your Sunday letter. Don't apologize for writing what you feel. Why should you? It only means I have to cry ‘De rien de rien' each time and that's silly. Heavens! What a journey it is to take one anywhere! I prove that to myself every day. I am always more or less marking out the distance, examining the map, and then failing to carry out my plans. Its rather nice to think of oneself as a sailor bending over the map of ones mind and deciding where to go and how to go. The great thing to remember is we can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. But the tremendous effort needed - one doesn't always want to make it, does one? And all that cutting down the jungle and bush clearing even after one has landed anywhere - its tiring. Yes, I agree. But what else can be done?What's the alternative? What do you want most to do? That's what I have to keep asking myself, in face of difficulties.
But you are saying ‘what has this to do with our relationship?' This. We cannot live together in any sense until we - I - are am stronger. It seems to me it is my job, my fault, and not yours. I am simply unworthy of friendship, as I am. I take advantage of you, demand perfection of you, crush you. And the devil of it is that even though that is true as I write it I want to laugh. A deeper self looks at you and a deeper self in you looks back and we laugh and say ‘what nonsense'. Its very queer, Jones, isn't it?
[To Ida Baker, 14 March 1922.]