FOUNTAINHEAD...

“FOUNTAINHEAD” depicts four kinds of men:
1. Man who should be
2. Man who could be
3. Man who cannot be and knows it
4. Man who could not be and does not know it

I wonder which category I fall into. Ellsworth Toohey is the closest I can get myself to. The man who cannot be and knows it. I have done things Toohey has done “Enshrine mediocrity…” but I have not shown anything to “raze all shrines”, unlike Toohey.

Sometimes I feel like Peter Keating, confused and give in to doing things the “collective soul” would appreciate. In fact I’m contemplating celibacy just so that I could be perceived as an idiosyncratic, stolid, quintessential celibate. These, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to achieve. And even if I do, will it make me happy ? Happy only if I’m successful at what I do for a living. Here successful is synonymous to filthy rich. If you are "that" everybody appreciates whatever you are. I think I should leave that for time to tell.
If I can bring myself to achieving these attributes to my character, no matter where I land up, I guess, Howard Roark would be the man I come closest to.
Most people are mixture of Keating and Toohey, including me.

We know Roark is what one should be. But we avoid being Roark. Its’ like being Cipher from MATRIX who would rather dwell in the dream world rather than the real world. Being Cipher wouldn’t amount to anything. Being Neo, Trinity or Morpheus is hard and the thing (belief) they were giving up their life for, did that amount to anything they had perceived ? After NEO wins, there would have been abominable politics, guile systems to satisfy few chauvinists and snobs. There also lurks the possibility of machines attacking again, consolidating their enslaving supremacy.

Still, there remains the difference between “achieving something” and the “way you choose to achieve”. I know that I’ve made the choice. I have to learn why I made that choice – as THE ORACLE puts it.

Excerpts from My Diary [What have I Learnt Today… 7th July, 2007, Kolkata]