To My Daughter

By Suvro Chatterjee

Remember the long debates about what matters in life? Wish you could find a book which offers practical tips for living well? You are holding that book now – so, come aboard.
From learning about your personality to making wise career choices and changes, from nurturing a healthy body and mind to understanding the place of money, politics, poetry, science, art, books, friendship, time, dreams, beauty, Karma, laughter and God in your life – this book covers all that and more.
To My Daughter is for all ambitious and inquisitive young people, as well as parents, teachers and thinking citizens who are facing the challenges of living life in today’s world. Unlike most contemporary self-help books, this one does not make life sound all easy and exciting, but says it like it is: a great struggle, but also a great adventure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Notion Press
• Release date: Apr 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9789383808458

Book preview

God

Introduction

This book was written originally in English by a forty-year old man over a period of seven months, and it has been revised, even in minor details, several hundred times, so the author feels justified in thinking that he has been able to say exactly what he wanted to say, within the limits of his ability. He was aware that he was not born with a talent for high art or original philosophy, but he will claim this much: he was motivated by a most earnest desire to make the work of living life a little simpler and more enjoyable for at least one human being, and he had read and observed and thought a great deal, with other people and by himself, and aimed consistently at clarity and simplicity of exposition. If misunderstandings still occur, they will be not due to but in spite of his efforts. If a few people find the book not only helpful but enjoyable, he will be gratified.

While the book was being written he asked many people to read through certain chapters and comment on them. From their reactions he could make out clearly that even clever and well-meaning folks don’t always read patiently and reflectively, and do not remember the whole when they are commenting on the parts, and so they often get it hopelessly wrong! The least that the author will expect of his readers is that they give him a patient and attentive hearing, and read the whole book through, and take some time to digest the whole thing, before they arrive at conclusions.

It all began when the author felt a sudden urge one day to write down for his growing daughter a few things he had learnt about life and people that he considered important for her to know, or at least to think about. He had thought at start that he would be able to sew it up in a few pages: he wasn’t, after all, a great or important man, he couldn’t have very many things to say. But before he knew it the work had possessed him, and taken on a life of its own, until it grew so complex and voluminous that he thought it advisable to divide it up into subject-wise chapters, and before long he had a full-blown book in his hands. Having been a most avid reader of almost every sort of thing in print for nearly 47 years, he can state, in all humility, that it is not the most boring or most trivial book that he has read. If his daughter doesn’t give it the time and attention he wants her to give, he will at least pray that she picks up some of the same ideas from somewhere else for her own good before it is too late; it took her daddy so long that he had little time left to make use of them!

The author’s deepest aspiration is that his daughter will grow up to read the book over and over again, and value it more and more as she grows in experience, and perhaps realise that daddy did something uncommonly good for her, beyond keeping her safe from needless harm through childhood, arranging for a good formal education, having lots of fun with her, and leaving behind a little money in the bank: things that most daddies try to do.

Insofar as the author hopes that the book will be widely read, it is because he believes that the book could be of use to very many people if mindfully read, and that much of what has been said in the book would be of genuine use only if not his daughter alone but many people growing up with and around her appreciated its value and put it into practice in their own lives – many things are difficult to practise alone, but become not only profitable but much easier if a lot of others do so at the same time. The author knows only too well that no one can change the world, and even if he can, the result is often very (and horribly!) different from the world of his dreams; besides, he was not born with heroic qualities, and so he has not given himself heroic airs. If a few people’s lives are rendered safer, more colourful, less agonising as a result of reading and living by this book, if there is just a little bit less suffering in the world because of the best he could do, he will have amply justified his existence in his own eyes.

Though the author is an Indian (and, on the whole, rather sad but not ashamed to be so), and the book is in many places coloured by the contemporary Indian experience, he trusts that the main thesis of the book is of universal validity, not merely because he is in touch with the main currents of global life, but also because India is big and complex enough to be a largely true reflection of the lot of all mankind, if one drinks deeply at her well. No parent anywhere in the world will find the bulk of the book irrelevant, nor is a parent’s perspective the only one from which the book can be read.

All the chapters in a sense stand alone, and so they can be read in any order, but for best results, the author would like the reader to go down the list of contents in the order given, and then, once the book has been finished, come back and re-read some of those chapters which have acquired greater depth and meaning in the process of being mulled over at the back of the mind.

The author would like to express his gratitude to all his teachers and inspirers, not only those who have been around in flesh and blood and loved him and encouraged him and lectured him – including, most importantly, his daughter and his wife, besides lots of young ex-students now scattered all over the world – but also all those wise and good men and women of old who have taught him through their books, and even those (alas, very numerous) people who have, through their badness (or foolishness) taught him that it is not enough to be good; one needs to learn to be strong and clever and cautious too in order to survive with safety and dignity in this world.

Some people are likely to be offended by certain things said about their habits, outlooks and manners. The author begs their forgiveness in advance, but he would like them to remember that if any hurt was given it was not given with the purpose of hurting: he would like all such people to realise that their own lives would be far better if they revised their attitudes, and they would hurt a lot of people a lot less, thereby making the world a slightly better place to live in – which is something that probably everyone secretly wants, even the worst among us, and the most benighted.

One last word: the author has not sought to pose as an oracle, not for his daughter, nor for anyone else. If the reader acknowledges him to be a reasonably intelligent, well-informed and sane human being with his heart in the right place, as they used to say in the olden days, he will be more than satisfied.

It’s 18 th August 2003, and I started writing this letter upon a whim. Not that the idea is in any way whimsical: I’ve been meaning to get down to it seriously for quite some time now. You are going on seven, and I am forty. You are a bright, lively, curious, healthy and loving child – God be thanked – on the threshold of a very rewarding lifetime of education, I hope, while I have lived life richly, and most of the best years of my life, I suppose, are already behind me. But the memories have not begun to dim yet, and before they do, I thought it fit to start writing them down in some sort of readable order, that they might – just might – come in useful to you some day in the remote future, when I am no longer physically around, or in full possession of my powers. Even otherwise, it is good that I should write these things down whenever I am in a relaxed and reflective frame of mind: it so often happens that we are always so harried, distracted and tied up with the ordinary business of life that many of the most important things go unthought and unsaid when they might have done some good! While it is true, alas, that many parents have nothing valuable and interesting to say to their children, those who do have some (and I flatter myself that I do – you will be the judge!) all too often never manage to find the time. Some of the best people did, of course, and I’m sure that you will read and appreciate and learn from Nehru’s Letters from a Father to His Daughter someday, as you have already enjoyed When Daddy was a little boy by Alexander Raskin . By following in their footsteps, I will do you no harm, even if it is beyond me to do any real good!

One earnest request at the outset: PLEASE do not read this in the spirit of listening to a sermon. It was not intended to be one. By the time you begin to read it seriously, you will have seen and thought enough by yourself to know that a lot of grown-ups, especially those who have this bad habit of sermonising at the drop of a hat, deserve to be ignored, and also understood daddy well enough to know that he basically hates sermonising and ordering about, just as he hates people who try to do that to him. At the same time you may have also noticed, and been puzzled by the contradictory fact that a lot of people like to hear him sermonise, and have liked it for years and years, just as you yourself have, time and again, in the process of growing up, even though you quite possibly may not always have believed or obeyed what he told you. So just listen in that spirit, and keep thinking about these things, and take and use in your life the things which appear valuable to you: for the rest, it will be between you and your Maker, just as it has been with all of us, though we too often forget.

I am not here to give you lessons, but – in case it hasn’t struck you – I have managed to convey a few already. ‘Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice’, said Shakespeare, and I have concurred, on the strength of my own lifetime experience: it’s good advice, keep it in mind. In the end you must live your own life your own way, with God alone as your failsafe guide for all time – so believe in God, as the True, the Good and the Beautiful, as the ultimate and only friend, and hope, and source of strength and joy and peace; regardless of whatever people tell you to the contrary, in support of superstition or in opposition to it. S/He lies beyond reason and beyond the five senses, and yet S/He also always dwells in your heart, if you look hard enough: that’s all that matters; forget the rest. Also, never yield to the very, very common delusion that you’ve got to respect and trust and obey anybody just because he or she is much older than you: one of my most favourite sayings has been ‘a fool when he grows old simply becomes an old fool’. Test him or her by the light of your own reason, experience and awakened conscience before you give your heart and mind to anybody. I have no hesitation in asking you to treat all my words the same way; take only those which seem truly valuable, and throw away the rest, forgiving poor Daddy for not knowing better, though he meant well. Just one caution: what seems nonsensical today, at first reading, might turn out to be sage counsel two, five, or maybe twenty years later!

Now let’s see: what else should I like to say to you?

• The only purpose of this life is enjoyment – be happy.

It does not matter how and where you find happiness – in reading books, in painting pictures, in watching movies, in making a home, in excellent examination scores, in a well-paid job, in trying to make your nation great – what matters is knowing that happiness itself is the end, and whatever you are doing, or thinking of doing, can only be a means to happiness, or something that takes you away from it, in which case it must be given up, no matter what doubts others may have about it, and how hard it might be to give up. If you are not happy, and if you are not actively cultivating happiness, you merely exist, you do not live, and your life will have been wasted. Nothing can compensate for the resultant bitterness in the dusk of one’s life, BEWARE! Daddy will never bother much about whether you have ended up as a doctor or engineer, actress or politician, artist or homemaker – all that he will want to know is whether you are happy. Only a happy person can make others happy: remember that too, for the sake of all those you love.

• One needs to find out what being happy means, and then practise diligently.

It’s not easy: for most, it takes a lifetime just to find out, and no life is long enough to become practice-perfect, unless you are born to be a Buddha, or a Christ. How do you know you’re happy? – I’ll just give you a few pointers. If you wake up every morning with eagerness to face the new day, and go to sleep every night with a feeling of having done your best at whatever came your way, if you rarely complain and feel jealous of others, if you need no motivation to make you do any work except what you feel within yourself, if you are not constantly assailed by guilt and regret, if you feel ‘in control’ most of the time, you are happy. One thing that must be remembered, always, is that enjoying yourself, being happy, is definitely not the same thing as ‘having fun’, at least as ‘having fun’ is conventionally understood. In fact, having fun too often means avoiding work and all serious thought, not feeling others’ pains, shirking responsibility, even for your own life, indulging in cheap and evanescent and often vulgar thrills ( drunken driving, wild parties, bizarre clothes, gorging yourself…what in my day used to be called ‘kicks’ – I wonder what your friends use now?), wasting both time and money, and eventually becoming more and more bored with life, which is the biggest waste of all. Check out for yourself, don’t take my word for this: the happiest people are not the most noisy and frenetic; very often they are the quietest, and most self-absorbed. Those who can find true involvement in nursing, or research, or teaching, or some form of art-work, or making joyous homes, are actually having the most fun. Paradoxical as this may sound, it is only in finding the kind of work that you really like, and doing it lovingly, that you can find happiness (this, by the way, is what the Buddhists call ‘right livelihood’).

• The absolutely basic prerequisites for being happy, so far as I have been able to find out, are:

Stop ordering your life according to ‘what people will say’, 2) Know yourself – what you really want, and what you are really fit for, 3) Accept that life can be hard, and challenging, and frustrating; learn to enjoy the troubles just as much as the smooth patches, 4) Become comfortable with the thought that you don’t really matter to anybody but yourself, and that one day you will be sick, and alone, and then die, and be forgotten, 5) Take responsibility, but do not become obsessed with it, 6) Set yourself targets, but be equally cheerful whether or not you achieve them, 7) Take care of your health, 8) Live by a reasonable but firm routine, 9) Take pleasure in loving, but do not expect that anybody is obliged to reciprocate that love, 10) Learn to become attuned more and more to the infinite and eternal rhythms of the cosmos.

This last item might need some explaining (clearing things up for myself, too, in the process). While it is good to be practical in dealing with people, and conscious about the value of time, and regularity at work, setting targets, keeping promises and things of that sort, we become too easily and too tightly ensnared by such worldly things, until life becomes suffocating and pointless. If you are right now still a student, you will have begun to feel it in the seemingly endless drudgery of lessons and homework and examinations; as you grow older and enter professional life, chances are you will feel it even more oppressively. If we are always looking down at our feet, we can never see beyond our noses; that is the price we’ve got to pay – and it’s not worth paying. Therefore you need to look up at the stars every now and then, and wonder. A very great scientist once said that one who has lost the gift of wonder has lost everything. It isn’t that wonder will lead everybody to discovering great things – though that keeps happening again and again – but even if it doesn’t, it cannot fail to make the act of living forever interesting, and that is what matters in the end. So never forget the joy that you felt as a child when you found an unusually-shaped pebble, or a brightly-coloured butterfly. There’s another enormous benefit, too. When you connect, through literature and science, to the infinitely diverse joys and sufferings of mankind, and to the vastness of eternity (the stars are quadrillions of miles away, the universe is billions of years old, there are worlds within worlds inside every atom, even the ‘modern age’ as understood by historians is already 500 years old!... nothing in this whole wide world stays unchanged from day to day, from your own body to mountains and galaxies, yet so many things seem to continue forever, from ancient customs to the ceaseless succession of night and day to the genetic code), your own problems and woes seem suddenly very trivial, and therefore much more bearable. This is what the sages have identified as the pleasures of philosophy: don’t you think it is much more worth having than all the material joys of the world?

You may have reached that stage of self-consciousness when one begins to feel unhappy about being handicapped in one way or the other. Even if, God willing, you have not become seriously disabled physically or mentally, you may be feeling that Fate has been unfair in not equipping you with this or that ability: you cannot sing or draw or act or do mathematics or athletics as well as some of your friends, or your daddy doesn’t make enough money to afford this or that luxury the way some other daddies can, or have enough free time to go on holiday trips more frequently, and so forth. Here are a few things I’d like to say about this:

1. Everybody feels that way, even grown-ups, and even the most mature people cannot avoid it sometimes, so there’s nothing abnormal about it. But it becomes the source of much abnormality if you let it go out of hand (people become neurotic, and depressive, and criminal, or even suicidal!) – and haven’t learnt to live with it and control it more or less effectively by the time you start thinking of yourself as an adult.

2. Count your blessings. Believe me, there are many, and reminding yourself often helps hugely. Keep telling yourself – I am not deaf and mute or blind or lame or autistic, and I am not desperately poor and homeless and orphaned, I have a reasonably stable and happy family, I am allowed a very considerable degree of freedom, I do not have to live too much under the oppressive weight of superstition and unfair custom…this exercise, once it becomes part of second nature, not only keeps your heart light but makes you a happier and more socially valuable being, because you become less self-obsessed, more aware of the sufferings of those who are worse-off, more sympathetic and caring and helpful. All great religions urge you to find out how by ‘living for others’ you make your own life less frustrating, more fulfilling; it never fails, so long as you remember that ultimately you are doing good only for yourself, and do not make the mistake of pinning your hopes on the gratitude and reciprocity of those who benefit by your work (‘’Tis God shall repay: I am safer so.’, said Browning in the poem called The Patriot). Most of us most of the time make the foolish mistake of comparing our lot with that of those who are ‘above’ us in some way (prettier, richer, healthier, cleverer), rarely bothering to find out whether they too have their own sorrows (which they generally do! – few people have it all in this life, and if they do, it’s not for long: read the story of the Kennedy family!) or to look ‘below’, at the vastly more numerous crowd of those who are less fortunate, which is bound to make us more thankful for being where we are.

3. Accept many unpleasant things about the world around you that you cannot change, and learn the art of living with least danger and irritation in that world. That is as important as being brave and energetic enough to try and change the world in important ways – the greatest of men and women, who have indeed done very much to make the world a more liveable place, have also, beyond a certain point, failed to change things as they would have liked to. You have been born a woman, in a very poor and backward country steeped in foolish tradition, where genuine merit is far more often abused and ignored than valued, amidst what is arguably the most complex and perverse species that ever walked the earth, at a time when our sheer number and greed is threatening to overwhelm the resources of the planet – these are facts of life that you must learn to live with, though it will be ever my most fervent prayer that you may contribute something towards ameliorating some of these problems for the welfare of all who come after you: no father can harbour a higher ambition for his child. I remember the words of a prayer that I learnt long ago: Let me have the courage to change things that I can, and the patience to bear with those that I cannot – make use of them in your life.

4. It is the commonest human weakness to give up too easily, and blaming ‘others’ – teachers, parents, examinations, friends, employers, society, tradition, race, nation – for one’s own shortcomings. I hope that as you grow more perceptive, you will discover that grown-ups too (even seemingly educated grown-ups in positions of high authority) are doing this constantly to cover up their own failures and deficiencies; headmasters, policemen, judges, doctors, bureaucrats, ministers all keep insisting that this or that regrettable situation is not their fault, and they can’t do anything about it! Something or the other is always in short supply – other people’s money or goodwill or active support, or technology or organisation or the ‘right’ ideology or great leaders, whatever, everything but their own courage, initiative and sustained effort! Few seem to realise that when each is responsible for dereliction of his or her own little duty, it becomes that much more difficult for others to change things for the better: if all the teachers are lazy and unmindful, the headmaster alone really cannot run a good school; if all the headmasters are incompetent and indifferent, the bureaucrats above them really can’t do much, either, and if all the bureaucrats are just doing the least possible to hang on to their jobs, the most sincere and assiduous minister in charge of education can do precious little to clear up the Augean stables! – Indeed, I sometimes pity the politicians of this country: we have happily made scapegoats of them for all our nation’s ills, though even the best among them (there are always some good men in the most rotten lot, I assure you) are only desperately trying to make the best of a bad job, running a country of well over a billion people where hardly anybody will take responsibility for his own words and actions.

That is the nub: take responsibility for yourself. It starts by asking – have I done enough, have I done my best (doesn’t matter whether it is more or less than someone else’s best) before beginning to blame my supposed handicaps or other people’s misdeeds for my failures? I assure you that as a teacher I have found again and again that laziness and timidity are far more often the reasons for failure than stupidity. The best performers are by and large the diligent ones, but those who keep doing badly keep insisting that some boys and girls do far better simply because they are brighter, or because the ‘system’ is somehow bad – happily indifferent to the very well-known assertion by a very talented man that genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Oh, sure, talent counts for a great deal, if you ask me, in a student’s life as much as in working life, but then it must be clearly understood that the ability to persevere methodically over very long periods of time, regardless of the drudgery and opposition and setbacks, turning a blind eye to all the passing ‘fun’ that one is missing out by keeping one’s nose to the grind, is a far more valuable (and little recognised) part of ‘talent’ than what may be called the ‘divine spark’, that is intelligence and creativity. I give you this from my own life-experience: the former has served me far better than whatever cleverness I was born with. One never knows what one’s real handicap is before one has tried with all one’s might to overcome it! Look around yourself – the reality is that so many people, apparently very badly disabled, have worked miracles by dint of sheer dogged courage: lame people have climbed mountains, deaf people have composed wonderful music, Helen Keller did so much more than millions of ‘normal’ women have done, Roosevelt ruled a nation and brought it safely through a depression and a world war, David fought Goliath and won (Ralph Nader vs. General Motors is one 20th-century version of the story), Stephen Hawking amazed the world from his wheelchair, Einstein and Dr. Fred Epstein and Tagore were branded ‘problem children’ or mentally deficient by their schoolteachers, yet they went on to become superstars in their chosen lines of work and left ‘footprints on the sands of time’! They set themselves firm goals and slogged away until the goals were attained: that’s it. If they could, why can’t you?

If ever you feel depressed and defeated, ask yourself, what indeed is lacking in me but the urge to pick myself up and go on? I assure you, once you really take charge of your life, you will be bound to surprise yourself most pleasantly again and again. Nobody is ‘ordinary’ or ‘handicapped’ except to the extent that she thinks of herself that way. Find out your real attributes and make the most of them – that is what ‘think positive’ means, and that is the only way to live a good life.

Humour is something I have enjoyed greatly and missed greatly in this world. I would like to draw your attention to its meaning and significance, because I have found it to be so very important.

1. A sense of humour means the ability to find amusement in events, thoughts and people, including oneself, even when others (even clever ones) can see nothing but reason for despondency and gloom.

2. In this world there aren’t too many people who have a sense of humour.

3. Some of the ways humour makes life more bearable are:

a) It makes us cheerful and friendly rather than gloomy and quarrelsome people, so others like us more, which is essential for success in one’s professional as well as social and family life.

b) It helps us to accept our faults and weaknesses without becoming frustrated and bitter. For instance, when Bernard Shaw discovered that someone had cheated him of a hundred pounds by telling him a sob-story, he laughed instead of becoming angry and said, ‘It is good to know there is someone cleverer than Bernard Shaw in England!’

c) If someone can laugh at himself he earns people’s admiration and respect, and they stop criticising him. When someone in Congress said that Abraham Lincoln was ‘two-faced’, he stood up, pointed to his face and said, ‘If I had another face would I be wearing this ugly mug still?’ The audience dissolved in sympathetic laughter.

d) It is often necessary to criticise others, however unpleasant that might be. We have to point out the faults of our children, students, neighbours and colleagues from time to time. But people tend to get angry when criticised. If someone knows the art of making people laugh at their own faults, it is much easier to correct them without losing their friendship. That is why one needs a strong sense of humour to be a good parent or teacher.

e) Those who have no sense of humour take themselves too seriously and tend to get angry very quickly when criticised – and stay angry for a long time! Such people are generally unsocial, and if they get a chance they become dictators, whether over one family or a whole nation (like Mr. Rao in Masti V. Iyengar’s story Cyclone or Hitler).

f) A gift for humour is a great asset to a writer and an actor too, because they, like politicians, need to make their way through this world against a lot of apathy, misunderstanding and resistance.

Conclusion: A sense of humour is essential for personal success as well as to make a civilised society.

You were born with the infinitely precious ability to smile easily, beautifully and often. You might still be able to recall that since your earliest days in this world, Daddy has tried very hard to keep you laughing away. But he has also noticed, with the passage of years, that you have been born with the innate tendency to grumble, and complain, and get angry rather too easily over trifles! I’m sure you know about this already, and secretly feel a little embarrassed about it. As you grow older, and encounter more and more of the unpleasantries of life, it is going to get harder and harder to laugh easily and often – and harder still to make others laugh! But keep working at it, never forgetting that laughter is one of God’s most precious gifts; without it we as a species would not have survived the enormous burden of sorrow that life imposes upon us. Those who feel the sorrow most keenly also feel most keenly the necessity of ‘laughing away our blues’ from time to time. Believe it or not, Daddy felt it already before he had left school. If you want proof, reproduced below is an essay that I wrote (for a term examination!) when I was in class ten, meaning about sixteen years old:

"The dearest desire that a man can have is to enjoy a moment of involuntary joy – to laugh out loud, that the mirth may reach the eyes and dwell there for a while; to forget, without condition, every bit of grief and wrong in the world, to glory in blissful delight unmarred by the thought of having to pay a price for it. You can be happy, you can be contented, but I dare you to laugh out every other while. For happiness, contentment, they are but a man’s compromise with a hard, unyielding world: that he will have what he can and try to live with it as best as he can, though it might fall far short of his long-cherished dreams.

Can you be delighted for a moment, with such supreme happiness that it bubbles over, chokes every nagging demand of wishes unrealised, and think that you have got everything that anybody could ever desire – all that you with your wildest imagination could ever envisage and want to have for your own? If you can, then you laugh, and only then the cruel, ominous thunderclouds of living in a dreadful, unforgiving world draw apart, and the blue, sunlit heaven of peace smiles at you: you feel it is good to be alive after all, and you laugh. Tell me, O reader, is that not dearer than all the gold in the universe, rarer than the spoonfuls of radium on earth, more worthy of craving than anything else?

We smile at farces, we smirk at satires, we grin at embarrassments – but we laugh at the tramp that was Charlie Chaplin, oh yes, we laugh! Look up at him from the depths of your longing, your frustrations and mountainous problems, and your eyes will open wide, your mind will, with a mighty yet strangely effortless heave, throw away all your cares to fend for themselves – the gnawing at your heart will be soothed, your soul will want to sing aloud, and you will laugh.

They were the greatest missionaries Mother Earth ever gave birth to – the men who gave themselves the herculean and deadly serious task of forgetting their own sorrows and with the gentlest, most attractive persuasion, make their fellow-men laugh. Respect them, for they uncovered the most down-to-earth cause behind man’s unhappiness; love them, for they showed the light to joy, and pay them the tribute they would have most desired – laugh with them!

But the creator has a mystery for us to unravel yet. We laugh, not at the highest peaks of sophistication, of complicacy and intrigue – ah, for those we have invented our smirks and grins and knowing half-smiles – but at the simplest things, whose beauty arouses no conflicting emotions, only careless laughter. God made the village, and man slowly forgot it with his own ultra-demanding creation of doubtful pleasure, the town. So also God gave us laughter, but we with out myriad unworthy variations of the incomparable original are slowly, but with ever-increasing speed, forgetting it. Today you have to search for joy: it does not come to you by itself any more.

Stay not amidst your urban clutter, but go out into the wild. Listen to brooks rippling joyously over pebbles through a meadow, watch plumed birds jealously courting a common lady-love, look at a fawn with new antlers caught in a bush crying plaintively for its mother, gaze at children scampering with cattle in a fast-flowing stream, marvel at the sure-footed mountain goat, whistle away as you bathe in a luxurious waterfall – and by God, you will laugh! And then, too, will you praise the Maker for giving you such a priceless gift to live with, and, if you are blessed, to die with