So the symptoms [of ——‘s breakdown] I had noticed three weeks ago were real. I am afraid that the reason is clear: “He buried himself in his activity.” And that is just what one should not do. One becomes unable to put things in perspective, to detach oneself, to push away all the fuss and petty details that encumber our life and can devour our hearts. Actually, the cause is the same arrogance that seeks to convince me that all depends on me., all relates to me. Then the “I” is filling all reality, and the downfall begins. The essential error of modern man is to identify life with activism, with thought, etc. hence an almost complete inability to simply live, i.e. to feel, to appreciate, to live life as a continuous gift. To walk to the train station in a light that feels like spring, in the rain, to be able to see, to sense, to be conscious of a morning ray of sun on the wall—all of these are the reality of life. They are not the conditions for activism, for though…they are the reason one acts and thinks.
—Journals, March 9, 1973