A world ends nonetheless

"It is, again, an ordinary neurotic relationship, in which both partners wish nothing more than to end it, but in which each is incapable of taking final steps because its end presents itself to them as the end of the world. So they remain together, each helpless in everything save to punish the other for his own helplessness, and play the consuming game of manipulation, the object of which is to convince the other that you yourself do not need to play. But any relationship of absorbing importance will form a world, as the personality does. And a critical change in either will change the world. The world of the happy man is different from the world of the unhappy man, says Wittgenstein in the Tractatus. And the world of the child is different from the world of the grown-up, and that of the sick from that of the well, and the mad from the un-mad. This is why a profound change of consciousness presents itself as a revelation, why it is so difficult, why its anticipation will seem the destruction of the world: even where it is a happy change, a world is always lost."

-- Stanley Cavell, from "Ending the Waiting Game," an essay in "Must We Mean What We Say?"

Quoted in memory of a friendship that was once good. The situation wasn't as harsh as what Cavell describes, but it was indeed neurotic enough for this section of the essay (one about Beckett's "Endgame") to stick in my mind.

My friendship with Raki was my oldest one. I'm not happy about how I ended it, but I'm glad I did. A better, more vivid world awaits me.