On Wed, Feb 5, 2014 at 2:23 PM, Biju Chacko <biju.cha...@gmail.com> wrote: > Yearning for a mythical rural idyll is just a way to whine without > trying to make a change in the real world. Don't even get me started > on the selfish self indulgence of exploring inner selves.
I think this debate is very much colored by one's experiences - and it's never easy to break away from the status quo. I like these words from Marcus Aurelius, "Words that everyone once used are now obsolete, and so are the men whose names were once on everyone's lips: Camillus, Caeso, Volesus, Dentatus, and to a lesser degree Scipio and Cato, and yes, even Augustus, Hadrian, and Antoninus are less spoken of now than they were in their own days. For all things fade away, become the stuff of legend, and are soon buried in oblivion. Mind you, this is true only for those who blazed once like bright stars in the firmament, but for the rest, as soon as a few clods of earth cover their corpses, they are 'out of sight, out of mind.' In the end, what would you gain from everlasting remembrance? Absolutely nothing. So what is left worth living for? This alone: justice in thought, goodness in action, speech that cannot deceive, and a disposition glad of whatever comes, welcoming it as necessary, as familiar, as flowing from the same source and fountain as yourself." "Do not then consider life a thing of any value. For look at the immensity of time behind thee, and to the time which is before thee, another boundless space. In this infinity then what is the difference between him who lives three days and him who lives three generations?"
