*image by Ben Harubin

One Pilgrim's Progress:
One man started off studying things,
then moved to reflecting on them,
then on to pondering them,
and finally on to realizing that
"realizing what was going on with them"
was the sole useful method.
So, see, don't give up hope just yet.

One man had two sets of underwear -- one annoyed him and the other didn't.
Then one day someone asked him why he wore the first set if it bothered him,
and he didn't have an answer. But he still had two sets of underwear!

One day a man asked his reflection in a mirror why it looked so disturbed,
and it said that it did because the man did -- and the man denied it -- and
the mirror denied it -- and the man said, "You can't deny it, you just said it was so!"
And the mirror answered him back with the same words.
Then the man looked puzzled.
And the man looked in a mirror at his reflection, and asked it why it looked so puzzled.

The police can't help you in capturing a perpetrator who looks just like you and them,
and it won't do any good to try and lay blame (such as, they're not on the job,
or that your description of the perp was lacking; it's just a fact:
they can't help -- you all look too much alike).

And a boy asked his father,
"Is it maybe simply that if you've got two of anything you've got troubles?"
And the old man pulled an invisible trigger on the imaginary gun he had
pointed directly at the lad.

And as his dream-world progress continued to comfort him,
one man bestowed a name on his inner woman
(which he began to recognize as also being his inner chain saw);
he called her The Beautiful Molly Rat-Gagger,
and felt twice as good.