#Literature

Reading is the self-indulgent ritual by which idle souls seek salvation in printed ink. The act of stacking books is the pinnacle of self-satisfaction, while actually reading them is nothing more than a battle with sleep. The more one flips pages in pursuit of knowledge, the more real-life hours quietly vanish. Library silence becomes the perfect alibi for one’s inability to focus. The spines on a bookshelf are the con artists promising ‘someday I’ll read this’ ad infinitum.

The sublime is the ritual by which one declares oneself perched atop self-congratulation, conveniently forgetting any room for doubt. Under the guise of grandeur, it allows the sweet intoxication of self-admiration, transforming it into a get-out-of-clarity-free pass to demand awe. Yet the higher one stands, the more the gaze cast downward on one's own vulgarities tends to blur. True sublimity is not a tool to satisfy one's desire for external praise, but an ascetic ordeal of brutally confronting one's own imperfections.

Symbolism is the gaudy ornament used to conceal the tedium of reality. A con artist’s trick that forcibly links two unrelated things and wafts the aroma of profundity. The world gazed through the magic mirror of abstraction becomes a labyrinth of meaningless riddles. More often than not, the more people nod wisely, the emptier the substance. A carnival of empty signifiers masquerading as depth.

The Pilgrim's Progress is an allegorical marathon in which a believer carries the burden of faith down an endless path toward the elusive goal of salvation. Each trial and temptation encountered along the way feels like a system that resets progress just as you near the finish line. The characters stack up perfunctory acts of virtue while secretly wishing they could drop out of the pilgrimage altogether. It’s a deadpan production that lets you experience spiritual euphoria and existential boredom in the same breath. In the end, the true ironical truth reflects back: the burden is handed off to the next pilgrim waiting at the starting gate.