Maintaining the illusion that I am in control is futile, lonely, and in the long run more always costly than the effort is worth.

The adult May fly lives only a few hours, just long enough to mate. He has neither mouth nor stomach, but needs neither since he does not live long enough to need to eat. The eggs the May fly leaves hatch after the parent has died. What is it all about. What's the point? There is no point. That's just the way it is. It is neither good nor bad. Life is mainly simply inevitable. (41)

If I reveal myself without worrying about how others will respond, then some will care, though others may not. But who can love me, if no one knows me? I must risk it, or live alone.

To live without the creative potential of our own destructiveness is to be a cardboard angel.

I've never began any important venture for which I felt adequate prepared

But after a while, she began to experience the new reality of each person as being as strong and as weak as anyone else. Slowly, she learned that each of us grown-ups has as much and as little power as the other, and that we had best learn to take care of ourselves.(83)

So it is that there is nothing to be taught, but yet there is something to be learned.