I am Acutely Exhausted

So I'm doing the lazy thing and making you read my old schoolwork.

Mindbender #15

The Pleasure of learning and knowing, though not the keenest, is yet the least perishable of all pleasures. A. E. Hausman

Knowledge, while not the most desired pleasure, is the one that lasts the longest, staying with one until the ravages of Alzheimer's and age have fully destroyed it. Love, on the other hand, is as perishable as the one loved, who is as turn as perishable as the delicious food they once ate.

I mean, seriously, romantic relationships are rarely enduring. Spouses can die, and relationships can crumble, and we all end up mopey and depressing, eating Ben and Jerry's and watching horrible romantic comedies. For instance, A Time Traveler's wife is about a woman who, after the death of her husband, spends most of her life waiting for him. How utterly depressing.

Food is even quicker to rot. We all crave a little something yummy, but we don't have chocolate cornucopias. Be it the Halloween candy that eventually runs out or the fresh kiwis that go bad before they're eaten, food just doesn't last forever, and cake never sticks around as long as we expect it to. Here is a poem I found online about how quickly chocolate cakes is gone. It wasn't a very good poem, so I won't bother to link to it. There is a finite amount of cake, unlike good poems, of which there is surely an infinite quantity.

Knowledge, however, sticks. I remember a speech made by the minister of my church at Walden pond. He remembered the works of Thoreau. Thoreau remembered the world and nature when he wrote Walden. The knowledge gained stuck with the minister and it stuck with me. Food is eaten and love dies, but knowledge endures.