A little exert from "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" and why I love this book.
Young Paloma speaking on synchronized diving.
"I sat there shouting at the television: go on, catch up with her, go on! I felt incredibly angry with the one who had dawdled. I sunk deeper into the sofa, disgusted. What is this? Is that the movement of the world? An infinitesimal lapse that has just succeeded in ruining the possibility of perfection forever? I spent at least half an hour in a foul mood. And then suddenly I wondered: but why did I want so desperately for her to catch up? Why does it feel so rotten when the movement is not in synch? It's not very hard to come up with an answer: all those things that pass before us, which we miss by a hair and which are botched for eternity... All the words we should have said, gestures we should have made, the fleeting moments of kairos that were there one day and that we did not know how to grasp and that were buried forever in the void... Failure, by a hair's breadth."
-The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
