Of all the fools in the world, the ones hiding behind self-awareness may be the worst. You can know yourself, or think you do, and be none the wiser, analyze your predicament to the nth degree and be no closer to escaping it. Melville had put it beautifully: “For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the cause of that peril; —nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.”

Slouka, Mark. Nobody’s Son. New York: Norton, 2016.