If there is nothing to see looking forward, we will look behind. Old age loves to reminisce. If the past is too tender a sapling, young eyes delight early on future fruits– and without the bitterness of impotence. Where neither forward nor backward is pleasing, we fall into conceits of our own justices and revenge: the power- and pleaure-less become impassioned of opinion and prophecy, that they too might have a view that captures their interest.
Life persists because it’s interesting? Because it finds itself interesting? Are the two the same?
The soul lives only through some view on life, cannot tolerate no distant horizon or no peek on some yard. Yet it is not possible to see from any other vantage point but through our own window; each of us is prisoner to ourselves, however hospitable or royal the quarters.
The necessity of, the usefulness of being interested for life’s sake demands that some details of the view from every cell window become of interest. Nobody finds his view without some quality of beauty, the essence of which is interest (since everything interesting can be reasoned to be beautiful; or everything beautiful, interesting).
Each of us, our souls, are a strained self looking out; one ought to evaluate a person’s opinion (i.e, “view”) based not only on what that person sees, but is constrained to see; not only on what he finds interesting, but on what he has to find interesting and how he must see to make it so; what we say judged not just by what we say, but by what our seeing says and how our saying sees.