Desiderata by Max Ehrmann
en.wikipedia.org
en.wikipedia.org
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.There's a quote widely attributed to Laozi, author of the Tao Te Ching
If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.https://books.google.com/books?id=7QNk4eNvS44C&pg=PA175&lpg=...
National Lampoon's Deteriorata
> I don’t believe that any supernatural force is at play, certainly not an all caring and loving one, for there is great and needless suffering in our world.
Consider an alternate reading, doubling down on unfolding:
“And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it will. Therefore be at peace with entropy, whatever you conceive it to be.”
One can read the whole and happily strive to bring local order to local chaos as a vocation, both suspecting that may be futile down the infinite yet fulfilled by the local effort, and being at peace with entropy.
The alternative seems so destructive to oneself, to imagine your efforts could change how the universe is unfolding. Perhaps your household you could exert some control over, maybe your neighbourhood or village, maybe town or even city, or perhaps if you really have luck through your hard work: country or larger population.
but the Universe? It has its own plans, bred from the physics of long-travelling dust and atoms, and its own path. We are not much of a concern to it nor can we affect change on it. It helps me to look at the stars when I am stressed that I am not "doing enough or being successful enough". Those stars do not know who I am and never will. Enough that I love and am loved, here in this small sphere in time and space where I exist.
> Only dead fish go with the flow
> And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.
I don’t believe that any supernatural force is at play, certainly not an all caring and loving one, for there is great and needless suffering in our world.
That all said, I do find much of the rest of the poem comforting and good advice for myself.
Very finally, I urge you to reconsider the phrasing of “bovine acceptance”. Cows are intelligent beings. They have long memories, they have friends, they have feelings. They have personalities. They are capable of learning.
I read the term "bovine acceptance" without considering it to denigrate cows, their personalities, feelings etc, but rather with the focus on "acceptance", their perceived resignation to fate or order/hierarchy.
My thinking was informed by a bit of Chocky [1], by John Wyndham, in which the key character, a boy called Matthew Gore - who has been communicating telepathically with an alien lifeform (Chocky) and trying to answer questions put to him about Earth - asks his father, "Why does a cow stop?"
What the boy means is that he sees cows mass at the field gate at the right time of day, awaiting the farmer who opens the gate, whereupon the cows turn the right way into the lane, enter the farmyard properly, enter the milking stalls without instruction etc - and then the whole process in reverse. But never do they undertake the oft-watched and easy action of raising the simple gate lever to open it for themselves. The father, narrator in the book, offers the idea of "limited intelligence" by way of explanation - but "bovine acceptance" of the world's order might actually be a more useful way to look at it. And, again - unlike the concept of "limited intelligence" - it's no slur on the cows' faculties or feelings.
"You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here."I guess the "crates and ramps" reference dates it a bit.
In my experience surprisingly few people are familiar with it.
> even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.
No they don't. Most people are average. Really, within a few sigma the fast majority is surprisingly dull and average.
You are not special, and neither am I.
Everybody does not have a novel in them.
A rose is still beautiful even though it's common. I think the problem is that people are often scared to open up about the more vulnerable parts of their lives. "Dull" people can have very interesting or poignant pasts, but can be unable or unwilling to share it.
I find "people" as an aggregate dull and stupid. But I've never met an individual person who doesn't have their own story, their own hopes, regrets, wins and losses. Very few have a novel's worth, but novels are not the only kinds of story to be told.