Recovery: Trying With Others

Abstract

Your and my recoveries are not the same — they obviously can’t be. But perhaps I can communicate mine to you. I can imagine what yours is going to be: after the torture of all these crags and chasms, the balm of a lilting story; after reverberating solitude, people, young people. And really, mine isn’t so different: I’ll report on talks we’ve had. Remember:

In order to live and let live, in order to manifest reverence, charity, and faith in men, it is necessary that men talk with one another, for “servitude, falsehood, and terror” ([Camus, The Rebel,] p. 284) silence men and prevent them from working together at their condition: there must be “clear language and simple words” (p. 283), at least to prove despair unreal... or simply to find out more clearly than without open discussion what is the case; Speech, including the silence that is a mode of it... has marvelously many meanings, ways, and effects…(11 above, Section V).