How can I be of use in the world? Can’t I serve some purpose and be of any good? How can I learn and study certain subject profoundly? You see, that is what preoccupies me constantly; and then I feel imprisoned by poverty, excluded from participating in certain work, and certain necessities are beyond my reach. That is one reason for being somewhat melancholy.

And then one feels an emptiness where there might be friendship and strong and serious affection, and one feels a terrible discouragement gnawing at one’s very moral energy, and fate seems to put a barrier to the instincts of affection, and a chocking flood of disgust envelopes one. And one exclaims, “How long, my God !

[Trying to explain his difficulty in settling down to a normal career, a failure which had angered his parents and uncles, he wrote of himself as ] the idle man who is idle in spite of himself, who is inwardly consumed by a great longing for action but does nothing, because it is impossible for him to do anything, because he seems to be imprisoned in some cage, because he does not possess what he needs to become productive, because circumstances bring him inevitably to that point.

A caged bird in spring knows quite well that he might serve some end; he is well aware that there is something for him to do , but he cannot do it. What is it? He does not quite remember. Then some vague ideas occur to him, and he says to himself,” the others build their nest and lay eggs and bring up their little ones.” and he knocks his head against the bars of cage. But the cage remains, and the bird is madden by the anguish.

"Look at that lazy animal”, says another bird in passing,” he seems to be at ease.

The cages lives, he does not die; there are no outward signs of what passes within him… But then the season of migration comes, and attacks of melancholia- “But he has everything he wants” say the children that tend him I his cage. He looks through the bars at the overcast sky where a thunderstorm is gathering, and inwardly rebels against his fate.

A certain idle man resembles this idle bird…

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Vincent van Gogh felt this and said so. He was a painter, the world now says he is undoubtedly one of the best. He drank Absinthe to salvage himself out of agony of failure, and loneliness. When he couldn't take it any longer, he killed himself.