Now think about the people you spend time with every day. How hard it is to put up with them, even the ones we love most! I won't even mention how hard it is to put up with ourselves. Everything is so unclear and messy. Everything keeps changing — the things themselves, time, movement, the things that move. What is there to hold onto? What should we really honor or chase after? I can't even figure it out. It all seems to contradict itself.
Pass from thence to the dispositions of them that thou doest ordinarily converse with, how hardly do we bear, even with the most loving and amiable! that I may not say, how hard it is for us to bear even with our own selves, in such obscurity, and impurity of things: in such and so continual a flux both of the substances and time; both of the motions themselves, and things moved; what it is that we can fasten upon; either to honour, and respect especially; or seriously, and studiously to seek after; I cannot so much as conceive For indeed they are things contrary.