on pushing down the stool on your foot
Greta often takes the footstool into the bathroom and plops it down so she can play in the sink, where she loves pouring water from one container into another, something I used to do endlessly as a kid.
Today she took it in and then I heard an immediate cry. This was a real cry: something was Wrong, right now. I rushed in to see her pushing down on the corner of the stool, whose leg was on her foot. She was in horrible pain and could find no way to get out. I lifted the stool leg off her foot and comforted her. Then I demonstrated over and over that you should pick the stool up off your foot instead of pushing it down.
How successful will that instruction be? Perhaps, in the microscopic issue of the stool itself, fairly successful. But, macroscopically, Greta was just enacting the human condition. We're all in horrible pain from the stool leg boring into our foot; and all our efforts amount to simply pushing it down further and further, hurting ourselves more and more. It's the way of all flesh.
Today she took it in and then I heard an immediate cry. This was a real cry: something was Wrong, right now. I rushed in to see her pushing down on the corner of the stool, whose leg was on her foot. She was in horrible pain and could find no way to get out. I lifted the stool leg off her foot and comforted her. Then I demonstrated over and over that you should pick the stool up off your foot instead of pushing it down.
How successful will that instruction be? Perhaps, in the microscopic issue of the stool itself, fairly successful. But, macroscopically, Greta was just enacting the human condition. We're all in horrible pain from the stool leg boring into our foot; and all our efforts amount to simply pushing it down further and further, hurting ourselves more and more. It's the way of all flesh.
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