Encouraging the young

I decided to encourage the young .Once I wouldn’t have done this, but now I have nothing to lose. The young are not my rivals. Fish are not the rivals of stones. I’ll encourage them indiscriminately, whether they deserve it or not. Anyway, I can’t tell them apart.

So I will stand cheering generally, like a blind person at a football game, noise is what is required, waves of it, invigorating yelps to inspire them to greater efforts, and who cares on what side and to what ends?

I won’t fatten them in cages, though. I won’t ply them with poisoned fruit items. I won’t change them into clockwork images or talking shadows. I won’t drain out their life’s blood. They can do all those things for themselves.

Margaret Atwood, The Tent

P.S. Dos poucos contos que se aproveita num livro muito fraquinho