Long Down Escalator and a Philosophical Gorilla

3

No matter how enthusiastic and serious we were, human beings do not change so easily. In the end, the problem remained unresolved after the meeting. We continued to brood. He had given up on being a pure gorilla and was now trying to become a "Philosophical gorilla". I, on the other hand, was still struggling up that long down escalator.

When I met him a month later, he was reading Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in the library.

"Are you sure you understand that?" I asked from behind.

He turned around in surprise. When he realized it was me who had called out to him, he said, "What, you? Well, I can't say I understand, but I'm trying to understand. That attitude is important."

"But is it okay for a gorilla to read a book?" I said.

It was then that he told me he had decided to become a "Philosophical gorilla".

"What the hell is a 'Philosophical gorilla'?" I asked, stunned.

"I mean that literally. A philosophical gorilla. Even though he's a gorilla, but he also uses his head."

When I looked at him, I noticed that his appearance had changed from a month ago. His body had grown a little bigger, and the muscles in his shoulders and back were bulging enough to be visible even through his clothes. I said in amazement, "Wow, you've changed so much in a month."

"Yeah," he said. "I put in a lot of effort. I went to the gym and trained hard. I ate nothing but fruit. How many bananas have I consumed? This is what it takes to be a philosophical gorilla."

I was stunned and speechless.

"How about you? Have you made any progress since then?" He asked.

"As for me, I'm the same as ever," I said. "I'm living a regular life, reading my favorite books, listening to my favorite music. But something important is missing. It's as if I were going up a long down escalator. No matter how much I go up, my actual position remains the same. Only fatigue builds up inside me."

"Hmmm. 'A long down escalator'," he said. "That's a very nice way of saying it."

"It would be better if I could just say something nice and solve the problem," I said.

"You know," he said. "I think it would be great if you became a gorilla too."

"Are you serious?"

"Well, I'm not saying you have to become a real gorilla. If that's better for you, you could say that you have to have something like a gorilla. What you need is that kind of wildness. If you stay in your room and think too much, your body will rot."

"Can a person become a gorilla that easily?"

"You'll never know unless you try," he said. "I'm not asking you to be a pure gorilla. You don't have to be a philosophical gorilla, either. I think you should be a literary gorilla. You can be a literary gorilla better than anyone else. I guarantee it."

I was getting more and more confused. But for some reason, I felt he had a point. His words had a strange - one might even call it wild - persuasive power.

"How on earth can one become a literary gorilla?" I asked.

"Read a lot of books and eat a lot of bananas," he said. Then he pulled a bunch of bananas out of his backpack and handed me half of them. "Here."

I received the bananas. Looking back, that may have been a harbinger of a turning point for me. Up until then, I had no idea what I was doing, where I was headed, or where I should be heading. But the moment I received the bananas, a guideline was born in my mind. It had no definite shape, but it was flexible and firmly connected to my center.