What I Have Lived For
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the s
earch for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great wi
nds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching
to the very verge of despair.
I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacr
ificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves
loneliness–that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the
world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of l
ove I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets h
ave imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what–
at last–I have found.
With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wi
shed to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which numbe
r holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.
Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity bro
ught me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims
tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of lonelines
s, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but
I cannot, and I too suffer.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance we
re offered me.