Keep constantly in your mind how many doctors die after a lifetime of wrinkling their brows in thought over the sick; and how many astrologers die after predicting with much ceremony the death of others; and how many philosophers die after exhausting their minds with countless discourses concerning death and immortality; and how many military man die after killing so many people; and how many tyrants die after exercising their power over the lives of others with an insolent snort as if they themselves were immortal; and how many entire cities, Helice, Pompeii, Herculaneum and countless others have been destroyed.
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It is a very interesting thing this “Comparing.” It is one of the greatest sources of suffering of our times.
My mother was 64 years old. She struggled with breast cancer for 8 years and passed away in January. As people poured to our home, there was a theme that struck me. Most thought that she died young and talked about what could have been if she lived longer. You know, no body compared her life to a lesser life of sorts. She could have lived a life of misery, she could have witnessed the death of her children or her husband, she could have died when she was 22 in a car accident, she could have been murdered, there are so many lesser possibilities.
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From the book, Sartre for Beginners by Donald Palmer
A group of friends on vacation go for a day hike in the Alps. Half way to the mountain top, which is their goal, they turn a bend in the path and find their way blocked by a huge boulder that has fallen in such a a manner that it cannot be dislodged and cannot be circumvented. The first hiker’s stomach sinks in disappointment. “That’s it,” he says, ” The hike’s over!” …. From Sartre’s point of view, this person has chosen the facticity of the boulder as an insurmountable obstacle and chosen himself as defeated. Continue Reading »
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When I consider the brief span of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and behind it, the small space that I fill, or even see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces which I know not, and which know not of me, I am afraid, and wonder to see myself here rather than there; for there is no reason why I should be here rather than there, now rather than then. Continue Reading »
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A quote by Volataire. Regarding being a victim in life.
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
What a profound way to put it. Continue Reading »
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