A couple things I read today make these thoughts all the more concrete.
The first comes from Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Anne has just finished talking to Ruby Gillis in what turns out to be their last conversation together on earth.
Heaven could not be what Ruby had been used to. There had been nothing in her gay, frivolous life, her shallow ideals and aspirations, to fit her for that great change, or make the life to come seem to her anything but alien and unreal and undesirable.... She had laid up her treasures on earth only; she had lived solely for the little things of life—the things that pass—forgetting the great things that go onward into eternity, bridging the gulf between the two lives and making of death a mere passing from one dwelling to the other—from twilight to unclouded day. God would take care of her there—Anne believed—she would learn—but now it was no wonder her soul clung, in blind helplessness, to the only things she knew and loved....
Anne walked home very slowly in the moonlight. The evening had changed something for her. Life held a different meaning, a deeper purpose. On the surface it would go on just the same; but the deeps had been stirred. It must not be with her as with poor butterfly Ruby. When she came to the end of one life it must not be to face the next with the shrinking terror of something wholly different — something for which accustomed thought and ideal and aspiration had unfitted her. The little things of life, sweet and excellent in their place, must not be the things lived for; the highest must be sought and followed; the life of heaven must be begun here on earth. (Chapter 14)
The second comes from Haffner's Defying Hitler:
A generation of young Germans... had never learned to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful, and worthwhile, how to enjoy it and make it interesting.
...There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. They began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis. (68-9)
Without a doubt, private life needs to be valued as it is lived and as something to be studied. It is the ordinary things in which we ought to find pleasure and meaning.
There is much on the earth that is fleeting and very much earthly. Ruby spent her life, enjoying boys and worrying about her looks. There's so much more to life that is meaningful and worthwhile! We ought to put our heart into something lasting -- something many Germans, Haffner says, never learned to do. Like Anne, we ought to have a deeper purpose while taking time to find the good in life.
No comments:
Post a Comment