Conversation

He has a long memory.

He’s my brother after all.

Oh, do you have a long memory too?

An inconveniently long one.

Why inconvenient?

Because I sometimes remember things I’d rather forget.

Things about yourself?

Things about myself, and about other people.

What do you mean?

Things I would rather forget, and other things I would rather remember. But it usually works the other way round. That’s why it’s inconvenient. One can’t control it, I wish I could.

I didn’t understand.

How old are you?

21.

Perhaps after some years you will come to understand it.

I’m not immature.

No, I didn’t mean that – at least, not in the way you seem to have taken it.

Does age have anything to do with it?

It doesn’t, strictly speaking. Not as age, not as a number of years you’ve lived per se. But it figures when you consider that at 21, and then at 31, you’ve lived that much more, seen so much and experienced all this wide scope of things. It broadens your understanding. At 31 you will know, perhaps, that there are things which are easier understood when you don’t ask questions. In fact, it is possible to understand many things without asking, without questioning – just by observing, watching and absorbing. You should start doing that now. I did, at a much earlier age than this. The I that I was at, say, 16 would not have asked “What does it mean?” The 16-year-old I would probably not have understood it then, but would have filed it away and come to see what it meant later, perhaps at 20, maybe 21.

Maybe. But people today don’t have so much patience.

Hm, so. They are the same people, it is the same world. Why is there less patience?

I don’t know.

We’ll think about it.