At teenage parties he was always wandering into the garden, sitting on a bench in the dark, smoking Camel cigarettes, the lit window behind him and the faint strains of 'Hi, Ho, Silver Lining' thumping away, staring up at the constellations and pondering all those big questions about the existence of God and the nature of evil and the mystery of death, questions which seemed more important than anything else in the world until a few years passed and some real questions had been dumped into your lap, like how to earn a living, and why people fell in and out of love, and how long you could carry on smoking and then give up without getting lung cancer.
Maybe the answers weren't important. Maybe it was the asking that mattered. Not taking anything for granted. Maybe that's when you stopped growing old.
And maybe you could put up with anything so long as you got half an hour a day to come somewhere like this and let your mind wander.
// Mark Haddon "A Spot Of Bother"
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