Augustine
The pears
Not for the fruit, for the theft
Confessions, Book II
A man in his forties spends pages on a boyhood theft of fruit he did not even eat. The question is why.
What actually happened?
He was sixteen. A gang of them went out late and stripped a neighbour's pear tree. There were better pears at home; they tasted the fruit and threw most of it to the pigs. Decades later he circles the episode for pages looking for a motive and finds none: no hunger, no need, nothing but the pleasure of the theft itself. Then the detail that settles it. Alone, he says, he would never have done it. The condition was not his character. It was the company.
Some wrongs have no reason at all
He tries every explanation and abandons all of them. Much of what people cannot get past stays open because they are still looking for the account that would make it make sense. Admitting there is no motive is the way out, not a failure to find one.
If why did I do that has produced nothing after twenty attempts, the question may have no answer.
Who was standing there tells you more than what you are
Alone he would not have gone. The variable that produced the night was the group, not his nature. After doing something bad, people interrogate their character, which cannot be changed on a Tuesday. The company can.
Who were you with the day it happened? Change that before you decide what kind of person you are.
Writing it out gives it edges
He is in his forties writing about pears, in detail. That is not a man who has failed to let go. Setting the whole thing down converts it from something permanently present into an episode with a beginning and an end, which stops it seeping everywhere.
Write the thing you cannot get past once, in full: what happened, and who was there.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: you did something you cannot explain to yourself, and it keeps coming back.
Ask first: are you still hunting for a reason? Who was with you that day? Have you written it out once, in full?
Where it goes wrong: turning it into they led me astray — he keeps the responsibility and only relocates the condition; and writing it down gives it edges, it does not erase it.
Lines to keep
It was foul, and I loved it.
Alone I would never have done it.
No motive, only company. That is the whole finding.
Same situation, other people are asking
It was my fault and I can't move past it.The more I explain, the worse it gets.I can't say why I did it.I've never told anyone. I've carried it for years.I'm the one who did wrong · all 7 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.