Having recently investigated membership in a shabby and glorious and stumbling institution, one comes away assured at least of this: Ambition and certainty about oneself in such a context is foolish, perhaps fatal.
David Warren points his readers to the Songs of Confucius:
Don’t escort the big chariot;
You will only make yourself dusty.
He (Warren) adds,
In summer we may walk in sandals.
And
To be free, especially, of the burden of envy -- a weight people carry like their own gut -- is to begin to have everything.
Risotto or a salad, shade, sweet tea, fragrant & juicy summer fruit, perhaps a companion. The Eastern Orthodox are enjoined to selective food intake on Wednesdays, regarding the practice as a step toward return to the obedience of Eden.
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