This summer I spent two weeks in a mental institution. See for example here and here.
I was in a ward where patients were being prepared to return to society.
Today I had lunch in Antwerp with two of the patients I had met in the mental institution. One of them had cooked for me, fried rice with chicken, a recipe from the Philippines. It was delicious.
Clearly they were well on their way to return to society, and it was undeniable that I had made some progress as well. I had realized that I wasn’t ready for society; that society wasn’t ready for me, but that that is the point were literature comes in.
Literature is (among other things) a mediator between society and people who aren’t yet ready for it.