What shall I do father?

"What shall I do, father," a brother asked an old man, "for I don't know how to bear with my thoughts."

"I am never embattled in that area," the old man replied.

Scandalised, the brother went to another old man.

"Look at what that old man said to me. I am scandalised at him, for he boasts of something beyond the power of human nature."

"What that old man told you was not all that straightforward. Go and apologise to him so that he can tell you what was behind what he said."

So he went back to the first old man.

"Forgive me, father," he said, "I have acted foolishly in leaving you without even saying goodbye. But please tell me, explain to me how it is that you never feel embattled?"

"Ever since I became a monk I have never completely satisfied my desires for bread, for water or for sleep. And so I think so much about those things, that my thoughts do not allow me to enter into the battles that you have told me about."

- from the sayings of the desert fathers