I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.
—H. D. Thoreau—
To live is to open ourselves to possibility, to rule out nothing. There is no way we can spare ourselves, or those we love, the pains of living, because they are inseparable from the joys. How grandiose we are when we think we can save the world. All we can do—and it’s quite a lot —is to live the best way we can, achieving a balance amid the forces that pull on us: pleasure, responsibility,
power, love. If we can live so that we respond to all of them, rule out none of them and yet enslave ourselves to none, we will have the best the world can give. One quality all great people seem to share is humor—the capacity to see our struggles and triumphs with detachment. Not that our life is unimportant, but that it’s only a part of the huge web of life on this planet.If we can keep our lives in balance, we won’t get puffed up by any little triumph, or squashed by a defeat. We’ll keep on with our lives, confident that we’re doing our best.
Let me not forget—my chief business in life is living.