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I thought you were of the view that it might come back to the cattle, but the problem is that all your thinking and analysis of whether or not your life is worth living to be convinced. What has been said, it can be summed up. All the details.           To Be or Not To Be       None of the books in my father's dusty old bookcase were forbidden. Yet while I was growing up, I never saw anyone take one down. Most were massive tomes — a comprehensive history of civilization, matching volumes of the great works of western literature, numerous others I can no longer recall — that seemed almost fused to shelves that bowed slightly from decades of steadfast support. But way up on the highest shelf was a thin little text that, every now and then, would catch my eye because it seemed so out of place, like Gulliver among the Brobdingnagians. In hindsight, I'm not quite sure why I waited so long before taking a look. Perhaps, as the years went by, the books seemed less like material you read and more like family heirlooms you admire from afar. Ultimately, such reverence gave way to teenage brashness. I reached up for the little text, dusted it off, and opened to page one. The first few lines were, to say the least, startling.   "There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide," the text began. I winced. "Whether or not the world has three dimensions or the mind nine or twelve categories," it continued, "comes afterward", such questions, the text explained, were part of the game humanity played, but they deserved attention only after the one true issue had been settled. The book was The Myth of Sisyphus and was written by the Algerian-born philosopher and Nobel laureate Albert Camus. After a moment, the iciness of his words melted under the light of comprehension. Yes, of course, I thought. You can ponder this or analyze that till the cows come home, but the real question is whether all your ponderings and analyses will convince you that life is worth living. That's what it all comes down to. Everything else is detail.   My chance encounter with Camus' book must have occurred during an especially impressionable phase because, more than anything else I'd read, his words stayed with me. Time and again I'd imagine how various people I'd met, or heard about, or had seen on television would answer this primary of all questions.              — Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos – Space, Time and the Texture of Reality             Indexes/03