The thread of Theseus

This morning I pulled out an essay on the labyrinth written by a writer I very much admire almost exactly 10 years ago. I would reprint the whole thing here if I could, but all you really need to know is the ending.

'The door at the end of the room opens up. A woman in a plain dress and Nike running shoes steps through and looks at the cookie gripped in my cracked hand.
"It's you," she says with a sigh and a smile.
I shrug and look at her.
"The blood. On the wall. It is yours."
"Yes," I say, wondering if she wants a cookie, but forgetting to ask.
"I almost gave up when I got in that long cul-de-sac, but I saw the blood at the end, and no body. I figured that someone else was in here. And they weren't dead yet."
I don't know what the Labyrinth is for, not really. Maybe it makes the world a better place. Maybe it is the world. Maybe it ends up complicating the simple distance between two points. I don't know what the Labyrinth has taught me, or if it has taught me anything at all. Sometimes I'm not sure that going through the Labyrinth is anything but a dream, and one that we share with no one. Sometimes, we wander through it with half a heart, knowing that we'll never find an end, knowing that our best efforts may be vain ones. I know that much is true. The one other thing I know is that sometimes, when we get really angry or inspired or exhausted, we do something we can't explain, and maybe then we leave a little blood on the wall for someone else to find.'