He chops celery. He doesn't know why, he's just chopping celery because it was there. And the knife was there. And the cutting board.
So he chops celery, waiting for tomorrow. In waiting, he absentmindedly checks the celery he chopped yesterday, and notices all the flaws in it. He did not see those flaws in that celery yesterday. He was actually kind of proud of that celery. But, he decides, at least the celery I am chopping today is a little better than the celery I chopped yesterday.
But then he remembers. He remembers the other celeries, all chopped by him, in that pantry over there. He stops chopping his current celery, curious about those other celeries.
He opens the closet, and is greeted with dust and bunches upon bunches of really badly chopped celery. Some of the worst in the world, he thinks. He picks up a bundle to examine, only to cringe and fill with embarrassment and frustration. This celery is so clumsily done, so sloppy and obviously a celery chopped in the image of other celeries way out of its league. He looks around the pantry once again.
Almost every celery in there is like that. He wants to curl up and toss these celeries so far from him that no one would ever associate them with him, but no. More than that, he wants to re-chop these celeries. He wants to fix these celeries to buff them up to his current level. But it is impossible. These celeries are already chopped, already cemented in their celery lives.
And then he has a worse thought.
What if even the celeries he is chopping right at this moment, sitting there on that chopping board, are terribly chopped?
Today he is proud of today's celeries, but he was proud of yesterday's celeries yesterday. Now he can look at those celeries and pick out obvious errors in the chopping.
What then, did he want his celeries to be? He did not want to be like those celeries of years ago, aspiring to be a celery they could not be. Yet if he had no celery to aspire towards, could he continue progressing in his chopping? Could he somehow evolve a form of chopping all his own, one that he could really be proud of, even years from now?
He is scared. What if he never makes it that far? Already he is losing his faith in his celery chopping. He looks over to the half-chopped celery laid out on the cutting board. Did he really want to finish this celery? Maybe he could wait a few weeks, until he was sure of his celery chopping again.
But he has never skipped a day of celery chopping since he started. There has always been a knife, a cutting board, and a lump of unchopped celery, waiting. And similarly, he has also always simply liked chopping celery. He didn't ever want to stop until today, when he realized that his celery chopping was not as good as he thought it was, and was that any reason to stop, he wondered. He should feel relieved, really, since he can tell there has been gradual improvement in his celery.
He thinks a moment more. If he just keeps chopping, he'll just keep improving, he figures.
So he goes back, and he chops celery.
