A good life is hard to find

June 10, 2013 — ample, Annie Dillard, good days, good life, greed, hard, Mann, Pasteur, senses, sweet, The Writing Life

There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.

A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more.

The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet.

Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading – that is a good life.

A day that closely resembles every other day of the past ten or twenty years does not suggest itself as a good one.

But who would not call Pasteur’s life a good one, or Thomas Mann’s?

Have a curious day.

From The Writng Life by Annie Dillard.