Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
Two prisonerswhose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. Thewall is the thing which separates them but is also their means ofcommunication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.
Thetorment of human frustration, whatever its immediate cause,is the knowledge that the self is in prison, its vital force and ‘mangledmind’ leaking away in lonely, wasteful self-conflict.
