goosevenfy's blog: "Is Life Worth Living?" asks William James

Monday, November 12, 2007

"Is Life Worth Living?" asks William James

In Is Life Worth Living? by William James James says: "Pessimism is essentially a religious disease."

He clarifies thusly: This "is why I call pessimism an essentially religious disease The nightmare view of life [arises from] the contradiction between the phenomena of Nature and the craving of the heart to believe that behind Nature there is a spirit whose expression Nature is."

He is wrong. Pessimism is a purely chemical phenomenon. Proof: Smoke a little marijuana and life becomes worth living.

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poem by Szymborska

UNDER THIS LITTLE STAR by Wislawa Szymborska

I apologize to coincidence for calling it necessity.

I apologize to necessity, if I am making a mistake.

May happiness not be angry with me that I take it as mine.

May the dead forgive me that they barely smoulder in my memory.

I apologize to time for the multitude of the world overlooked for a second.

I apologize to my old love that I regard the new one as the first.

Pardon me, remote wars, that I am bringing flowers home.

Pardon me, open wounds, that I prick my finger.

I apologize to those calling from the abyss that I am listening to a record.

I apologize to people at railway stations that I sleep at five in the morning.

Forgive me, baited hope, that I sometimes laugh.

Forgive me, deserts, that I am not running with a teaspoon of water.

And you, the hawk, for years the same, in the same cage, with your gaze fixed always on the same point, absolve me, even if you were just a stuffed bird.

I apologize to the cut-down tree for the four legs of a table.

I apologize to the big questions for the small answers.

Truth, do not pay too much attention to me.

Earnestness, show me magnanimity.

Mystery of life, endure my plucking threads out of your train.

Do not accuse me, soul, that I have you rarely I apologize to everything that I can't be everywhere.

I apologize to all, that I am unable to be every woman and every man.

I know that as long as I live, nothing excuses me, because I stand in my own way.

Do not hold it against me, speech, that I borrow words weighed with pathos, and then try hard to make them seem light.