Three Passions I Have Lived for
Three Passions I Have Lived forThree passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life:the longing for love, the search for knowledge,and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither,in a wayward course over a deep ocean of anguish,reaching to the very verge of despair.I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasyecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of my lifefor a few hours for this joy.I have sought it, next, because it relieves lonelinessthat terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousnesslooks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss.I have sought it, finally, because in the union of love I have seen,in a mystic miniature,the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined.This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life,this is whatat lastI have found.With equal passion I have sought knowledge.I have wished to understand the hearts of men.I have wished to know why the stars shine …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 brought me back to earth.Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart.Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old peoplea hated burden to their sons,and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be.I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.This has been my life. www.hxen.comI have found it worth living, and would gladly live it againif the chance were offered me.
