Kant was right

This is just an update for the sake of the oversea-ers. I've been pretty sick woth pneumonia and I'm only now really getting what I'd call up-for-going-outside fitness. I'm returning south this weekend and will begin to teach again next week, but i'll be gentle with myself. Fionnuala, to pre-empt your tut-tut, I can tell you that I'll be staying for a week or two with friends Rosemarie and Henry - the Peace People - in Phibsborough, so don't worry too much. Once I'm fully at myself, I'll move back to Maynooth in earnest.

But anyway, just in passing I'd like to note that when i was at the moment of worst fever when I really couldn't help myself much, it brought it home to me how much nothing we think we control we actually do. Obviously we control our bodies everyday, but the only thing which is ultimately ours is our free decision, our choice, our 'will'. I felt such a moment then where it was like I was just holding on with little more than my will to live; other than that we are as babies. Compulsions, psychological and biological may be said to affect the effectiveness of carrying out our decisions, but I have never been more convinced that that moment of initial decision, in whatever direction, is ultimately and absolutely free and ours; mine. The only thing there is to do in life is to want to live, to want to live well, to will good. An alcoholic who drinks but doesn't want to is purer than someone who doesn't and is proud. I'm convinced of that now.

p.s. I have watched the first three series of 'Only Fools and Horses', the first series of 'House', the fifth series of '24' and have discovered why thesauri were invented by doing the irish news crossword daily. Expect me to litter my sentences with unusual choice words from now on. My weight is coming back, and I'm even beginning to tap these keys again, so, I seem to be on the way up.