Lipton’s Journal/February 7, 1955/453

Yet to stay alive we must act. We must draw away from total acceptance of the self. We draw an enormous blank check upon the future, for man’s nature is to subdue the hostility of nature, and therefore enable himself to live forever in life. (In that sense Nature is always seen finally as The End, as Death—When an author finishes a book, he writes The End—he wishes to end this social concretion he has elaborated as the defense against discovering himself, and now deliver it to the reader’s sensibilities, to the reader’s self. He wishes the reader to take and to grow beyond him.) So, when we act, we hurt ourselves in order to give to others. We deliver a blank check to the future.