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When Quentin Compson sinks by his own doing to the bottom of a local river, he stands forever victorious over his life’s relentless antagonist.

Whether we realize it or not, most of us are perpetual life optimists. Think about it. Why, at the very least, do we wake up and press forward day after day?

Simple. It beats the alternative.

Accordingly, the social truism “time heals what reason cannot” is customarily perceived as comforting. It reminds us that soul-bruises (or in some cases, lacerations) are metaphoric replications of those inflicted upon our bodies. But the positive overtones of the message rely on the assumption that pain is intrinsically bad.

This is, biologically at least, false. Though unpleasant, it is the primary means by which we gain awareness of physiological irregularities. It is the messenger that indicates and gives legitimacy to internal wrong. Pain reminds us that our feelings have concrete foundations.

It is for this reason that Compson, if given the opportunity, would probably re-write the adage as follows: time dulls what reason cannot. The change sounds slight, but the difference is monumental.

Compson believes fully in the authenticity of his feelings regarding his sister, Caddy. If he didn’t, his anguish would have been merely for vanity’s sake. Realizing that duration, the great emotional equalizer, would one day strip him of his conviction—he would call it lucidity—he plays the only superior card in his hand and takes his own life. By doing so, he wins a battle within a war that has been waged since the world’s inception.

Quentin Compson stopped time.

Sadly or fortunately, most of us are not as courageous as Faulkner’s troubled protagonist. Truth is second only to survival. And as a survivor, I offer up this wholly academic and dispassionate lamentation for a cause, a person, in which I once believed. A cause that just yesterday bore the weight of tomorrow.

It’s true, things are easier now. The fire is out, the grass regrown. Life is, by all definitions, good. But the sadness remains, made sadder yet by my inability to feel it.

And the part of me that understands intellectually what has happened, what was lost, futilely wishes it wanted to cry.