“I have had a good life,” my grandfather once said to me, “but the fact that it’s just as useless as a horrible one has never ceased to bother me.” He spoke of a constant turmoil that began in his teen years and never went away when he became an adult. Instead it intensified and could only be ignored when one got used to its constant presence. But in the quiet, dark times, he would say, he couldn’t help but be reminded of his innate and total impotency.