If we knew what to pray for, every prayer would be answered. But we don’t. And they aren’t. Knowing that we don’t know is love’s first humiliation. It doesn’t mean we stop praying. It just means that henceforth we pray silently, without any words.
The problem with apologies is that they’re self-serving babble, a concoction of words. Words are not the truth. They may point to the truth, as a finger to the moon, but they are not themselves what they point to. Love acts. To know a man, to see what he really believes, watch what he does. Or doesn’t do.
The first two stages of life, that of student and householder, are for doing. The second two stages of life, that of hermit and renunciant, are for undoing. Adapted for the Western mind, per T.S. Eliot, we advance for a while and then we retreat, arriving where we started from and knowing the place for the first time.
Or some other low joint. “Let me tell you how it is, son. Let me tell you how the world works.” Oh boy. First, we cling to our toys, then to our opinions.
If all I know is what I think, I don’t know very much.
Men's Work 