These people constitute my whole world, and yet I could leave them any minute. Will it be thus when I, too, leave the world?
Courageously to forego the world--I think I have read the expression somewhere; but now I understand it. I feel it within myself and am carrying it out; not timidly, not sadly,--but courageously.
I am no longer sad. The calm satisfaction with which I resign the world emancipates me.
When I look at life, I ask myself: "Why all these struggles and all these barriers, until we come to the last barrier of all, unto death itself?" The great heroes of history and my little pitchman--not one of them had the odds of fortune in his favor. No destiny is completely and purely fulfilled.
Old Jochem said his prayers every day, and would often pass whole hours thus employed; yet he would curse mankind and his own fate. And I have known ladies of quality, who, after listening in rapt ecstasy to the music of Beethoven, would dispute and wrangle after the most vulgar fashion.
"Courageously to forego." The words are ever haunting me. Thanks for this precept, kind spirit, whoever thou mayst be! To live out the day and not allow it to be darkened by the knowledge that night must come, to forego with courage--that is the sum of all.
I never would have believed that I could live without joy, without pleasures; but now I see that I can. Joy and pleasure are not the conditions upon which my life is based.
We have it in our power to attune the mind to cheerfulness; that is, to calmness and clearness.