A good life is hard to find
June 10, 2013
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.