My Virtual Reading Room

"I often feel that death is not the enemy of life, but its friend; for it is the knowledge that our years are limited which makes them so precious.  It is the truth that time is but lent to us which makes us, at our best, look upon our years as a trust handed into our temporary keeping.

We are like children privileged to spend a day in a great park, a park filled with many gardens, playgrounds, and azure-tinted lakes with white boats sailing upon the tranquil waves.

True, the day allotted to each of us is not the same in length, in light, in beauty.  Some children of earth are privileged to spend a long and sunlit day in the garden of the earth.  For others the day is shorter, cloudier, and dusk descends more quickly as in a winter's tale.

But whether our life is a long summery day or a shorter wintry afternoon, we know that inevitably there are storms and squalls that overcast even the bluest heaven and there are sunlit rays that pierce the darkest autumn sky.  The day that we are privileged to spend in the great park of life is not the same for all human beings; but there is enough beauty, joy, and gaiety in the hours if we will but treasure them.

Then for each of us the moment comes when the great nurse, death, takes us by the hand and quietly says, “It is time to go home.  Night is coming.  It is your bedtime, child of earth.  Come, you are tired.  Lie down at last in the quiet nursery of nature and sleep.  Sleep well.  The day is gone.  Stars shine in the canopy of eternity.”

(Joshua Loth Liebman)

No one of us escapes limitations...Some people are gifted with their hands, some people are gifted in the realm of art or music, some people are gifted in the realm of abstract ideas.  Almost no one is gifted in all three realms.  We are all limited, and we must accept ourselves with our limitations, recognizing that we can do what others cannot do, that we can contribute where others cannot contribute.

To accept ourselves with our limitations means also that we will recognize how variable and flexible our lives can be.  The great thing about life is that as long as we live we have the privilege of growing.  We can learn new skills, engage in new kinds of work, devote ourselves to new causes, make new friends, if only we will exercise a little initiative and refuse to become fixed, rigid....

Let us, then, learn how to accept ourselves--accept the truth that we are capable in some directions and limited in others, that genius is rare, that mediocrity is the portion of almost all of us, but that all of us can contribute from the storehouse of our skills to the enrichment of our common life.  Let us accept our emotional frailties, knowing that every person has some phobia lurking within his mind and that the normal person is he who is willing to accept life with its limitations and its opportunities joyfully and courageously.

(Joshua Loth Liebman)