Yes! That's the best, Mike. Shakespeare always wins in the battle of wit and
words.
love youTerry
On Friday, May 31, 2024 at 09:47:49 AM EDT, Mike Godwin
<mnemo...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks, David. And you just reminded me of this:
"And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in
the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything."
Mike
On Fri, May 31, 2024 at 8:31 AM David Sharpe <dpsharpeaus...@gmail.com> wrote:
For me, the most provocative and takeaway line of B. Russell's passage was "The
organic need {union with the life on earth} that was being satisfied is so
profound that those in whom it is starved are seldom completely sane."
To be surrounded by nature and out in the country are important keys to the
success of Shakespeare@Winedale.
I enjoyed the piece. Thanks, Mike.
On Fri, May 31, 2024 at 6:45 AM Mike Godwin <mnemo...@gmail.com> wrote:
How to be Happy — Excerpt The Conquest of Happiness (1930) often cited as one
of Bertrand Russell’s most accessible and favorite books. 'Whatever we may wish
to think, we are creatures of Earth, our life is part of the life of the Earth;
and we draw our nourishment from it just as the plants and animals do. The
rhythm of Earth life is slow; autumn and winter are as essential to it as
spring and summer, and rest is as essential as motion. To the child, even more
than to the man, it is necessary to preserve some contact with the ebb and flow
of terrestrial life. The human body has been adapted through the ages to this
rhythm, and religion has embodied something of it in the festival of Easter. 'I
have seen a boy of two years old, who had been kept in London, taken out for
the first time to walk in green country. The season was winter, and everything
was wet and muddy. To the adult eye there was nothing to cause delight, but in
the boy there sprang up a strange ecstasy; he kneeled in the wet ground and put
his face in the grass, and gave utterance to half-articulate cries of delight.
The joy that he was experiencing was primitive, simple and massive. The organic
need that was being satisfied is so profound that those in whom it is starved
are seldom completely sane. 'Many pleasures, of which we may take gambling and
drink as good examples, have in them no element of this contact with Earth.
Such pleasures, in the instant when they cease, leave a man feeling dusty and
dissatisfied, hungry for he knows not what. Such pleasures bring nothing that
can truly be called joy. Those, on the other hand, that bring us into contact
with the life of the Earth have something in them profoundly satisfying; when
they cease, the happiness that they have brought remains, although their
intensity while they existed may have been less than that of more exciting
dissipations.'The two-year-old boy whom I spoke of a moment ago displayed the
most primitive possible form of union with the life of Earth. But in a higher
form the same thing is to be found in poetry. What makes Shakespeare’s lyrics
supreme is that they are filled with this same joy that made the two-year- old
embrace the grass. Consider “Hark, hark, the lark”, or “Come unto these yellow
sands”; you will find in these poems the civilized expression of the same
emotion that in our two-year-old could only find utterance in inarticulate
cries.'
Love to all,
Mike
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Be vigitant, I beseech you!
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