THE MISTAKE
In anything, it is a mistake to think one can perform an action or behave in a certain way once and no more. (The mistake of those who say: ‘Let us slave away and save every penny till we are thirty, then we will enjoy ourselves.’ At thirty they will have a bent for avarice and hard work, and will never enjoy themselves anymore …. ) What one does, one will do again, indeed has probably already been done in the past.
The agonizing thing in life is that it is our own decisions that throw us into this rut, under the wheels that crush us. (The truth is that, even before making those decisions, we were going in that direction.)
A decision, or an action, are infallible omen of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they results from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.
—- Cesare Pavese
