Walls of impenetrable blackness shut out. all life save
only this intruder and ourself; that other person becomes our world--
engaging our complete faculties.
Deeper misfortune cannot be conceived. It is through allowing such
occurrences to crush us that brows are wrinkled before their time;
nerves broken-edged while yet they should be firmly strung; death
reached ere yet the proper span of life is lived.
For these unduly wrinkled brows, too early broken nerves, too soon
encountered graves, civilised man has agreed upon an excuse. He names
it the strain of life in modern conditions. There is no body in this
plea. It is not the conditions that matter; it is our manner of
receiving those conditions. Bend to them and they will crush; face
them and they become of no avail; allow them to be the Whole of life,
and immediately they are given so great a weight that to withstand
them is impossible; regard them in their proper proportion to the
scheme of things, and they become of airy nothingness.
For if we regulate each to its right importance all that surrounds us,
not forgetting that since life is transient time is the only ultimate
standard of value, how unutterably insignificant must small human
troubles appear in their relation to the whole scheme of things, to
the enduring hills, the immense seas, vast space.
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