9781945186240

1. Not just that every day more of our life is used up and less and less of
it is left, but this too: if we live longer, can we be sure our mind will still be
up to understanding the world—to the contemplation that aims at divine and
human knowledge? If our mind starts to wander, we’ll still go on breathing,
go on eating, imagining things, feeling urges and so on. But getting the
most out of ourselves, calculating where our duty lies, analyzing what we
hear and see, deciding whether it’s time to call it quits—all the things you
need a healthy mind for . . . all those are gone.
So we need to hurry.
Not just because we move daily closer to death but also because our
understanding—our grasp of the world—may be gone before we get there.
2. We should remember that even Nature’s inadvertence has its own
charm, its own attractiveness. The way loaves of bread split open on top in
the oven; the ridges are just by-products of the baking, and yet pleasing,
somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why.
Or how ripe figs begin to burst.
And olives on the point of falling: the shadow of decay gives them a
peculiar beauty.
Stalks of wheat bending under their own weight. The furrowed brow of
the lion. Flecks of foam on the boar’s mouth.
And other things. If you look at them in isolation there’s nothing
beautiful about them, and yet by supplementing nature they enrich it and
draw us in. And anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—
will find it all gives pleasure. Even what seems inadvertent. He’ll find the
jaws of live animals as beautiful as painted ones or sculptures. He’ll look
calmly at the distinct beauty of old age in men, women, and at the
loveliness of children. And other things like that will call out to him
constantly—things unnoticed by others. Things seen only by those at home
with Nature and its works.