you must

the recognition was there, most definitely. the recognition that something needed to be done, that things could and would not go on the way they were; that among the infinite number of parallel universes there was none in which the current state of things would have been allowed to ensue. and more than the recognition, there was the need; an actual physical and emotional burn to do something about the matter at hand.

and yet he couldn't. O wasn't able to trigger the necessary nerves in his system to make this happen, even when the acknowledgement of the required change was so strong that ignoring it had become next to impossible. he couldn't quite understand why this was so -- why, when he so clearly realised the sheer unacceptability of his situation he still could not bring himself to do anything about it?

it wasn't so that the issue would have been overwhelmingly big. sure, it would change his life on many levels, and of course he couldn't be entirely sure that all that would follow would be only for good -- perhaps, had it been so, he would have been able to push himself to action with little to no effort. but whatever the consequences might have been, there was no way his overall situation would have got worse. that alone should have, he knew, been enough of an incentive to make the necessary steps. 

but instead the issue just sat there, in the middle of his existence like a big prickly blob of stuff, and he had no idea as of how to approach it. ignoring it hadn't made it go away, not at all; if anything, it had just became more obvious that it was up to him and him alone to do something about it. on some level O had hoped that someone would have appeared out of nowhere, a deux es machina, and made the decision for him, showed him how to go about it; but no such saviour had emerged and slowly O had been forced to accept that it never would.

thinking about the matter further didn't really help, either, as there was no actual uncertainty whether he should or should not tackle the issue. O knew he should, that sooner or later he absolutely must -- the do or not to do had ceased to be a question a long time ago. but even as there were no options, none what so ever, he lacked either the courage or the strength or the knowledge to execute the inevitable; and so, O decided, the only thing to do was to wait a little bit longer.

perhaps the strength would emerge; perhaps the courage would present itself. perhaps, if he just rested a little bit longer, he would know again how to get out of bed that morning.