An explanation of some kind ... is necessary—however absurd—to the happiness of every individual who seeks to do his duty in the world and face the problems of life. 

Algernon Blackwood, The Willows

I wanted all things to make sense,
So we'd be happy instead of tense.

 From Nice, Nice, Very Nice, Ambrosia

 

From a wonderful and beautiful book

Life is hard. Everyone believes the world is ending all the time. But so far, all of them have been wrong.... The truth is infinitely more complicated, that we are all beautiful even as we are all part of the problem, and that to be a part of the problem is to be human.

Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

 

In Honor of Brood X

Nothing in the cry of cicadas suggests they are about to die.

Matsuo Bashō

 

Men get very fond of the things they defend, especially when they find themselves defending something stupid.


Theodore Sturgeon in his wonderful short story, The Widget, The Wadget, and Boff 

Life in the COVID-19 Age

The snare in which humanity has been caught is an economics—great industry and commerce in service to great markets, with ethical restraint and respect for the distinctiveness of cultures, including our own, having fallen away in eager deference to profitability....The prestige of what was until very lately the world economic order lingers on despite the fact that the system itself is now revealed as a tenuous set of arrangements that have been highly profitable for some people but gravely damaging to the world. 

Marilynne Robinson, What Kind of Country Do We Want? (NYRB)

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. 

A.A. Milne

Life During COVID-19

Dolce far niente.

(The sweetness of doing nothing.)

Montaigne

When when I walk alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts are some part of the time taken up with external occurrences, I some part of the time call them back again to my walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness of that solitude, and to myself.... Have you known how to take repose, you have done more than he who has taken empires and cities.... of all the infirmities we have, 'tis the most barbarous to despise our being.... 'Tis an absolute and, as it were, a divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy his being. We seek other conditions, by reason we do not understand the use of our own; and go out of ourselves, because we know not how there to reside. 'Tis to much purpose to go upon stilts, for, when upon stilts, we must yet walk with our legs; and when seated upon the most elevated throne in the world, we are but seated upon our breech. The fairest lives, in my opinion, are those which regularly accommodate themselves to the common and human model without miracle, without extravagance. Old age stands a little in need of a more gentle treatment. Let us recommend that to God, the protector of health and wisdom, but let it be gay and sociable.


Montaigne, in his 54th year at the end of his magisterial Essays.   He died at age 59 after suffering some years of kidney stones.

This ends submissions from my reading of the Essays over the last three years.  They can be found here.  

Philosophy has not been able to find out any way to tranquillity that is good in common, let every one seek it in particular.

Michel de Montaigne

For you, no problem.

Reply at rental car return in Lisboa.

Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart.

Haruki Murakami, Men Without Women

Now is now!  There is never more to experience than this single "now", which recurs at an interval exactly one second in length.

Jack Vance, Tales of the Dying Earth


 See also:   http://everythingrum.blogspot.com/2013/09/moments-in-time-and-consciousness.html

We are, as we have always been, dangerous creatures, the enemies of our own happiness. But the only help we have ever found for this, the only melioration, is in mutual reverence. God’s grace comes to us unmerited, the theologians say. But the grace we could extend to one another we consider it best to withhold in very many cases, presumptively, or in the absence of what we consider true or sufficient merit (we being more particular than God), or because few gracious acts, if they really deserve the name, would stand up to a cost-benefit analysis. This is not the consequence of a new atheism, or a systemic materialism that afflicts our age more than others. It is good old human meanness, which finds its terms and pretexts in every age. The best argument against human grandeur is the meagerness of our response to it, paradoxically enough.

Marilynne Robinson, New York Review (November , 2017)

Personal happiness is profoundly conditioned by the social and political surroundings.

Tim Parks, "Revolutionary Italy: The Masterwork," New York Review (April 2, 2015)

[T]wo centuries ago ... Europeans made a wager on history: that the more they extended human freedom, the happier they would be. ... [T]hat wager has been lost.

Mark Lilla, "Slouching Toward Mecca,"  New York Review (April 2, 2015)

My moment-by-moment happiness is pretty low, but my life satisfaction is great.

From The New York Review of Dec 4, 2014.

Fate freely accepted ... is this not the very definition of Grace?

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie - in Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error - talking of the life of a 14th Century sheep herder of Occitania.

Despite knowing what it takes to be content, a man might still be unhappy.

Orhan Pamuk, My Name Is Red

How great the barriers can be between a person and his happiness,
How little it can take to make them seem small.

Marisa Silver (paraphrased)