a lesson

[jazzfish]

it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while

--archy (Don Marquis), "the lesson of the moth"

Comments

[daghain.livejournal.com]

Ok, sure, but I suspect there's more than two alternatives in play here.

[ancientsong.livejournal.com]

Marianne Dashwood: "To die for love. What could be more glorious?"

Um, living for it or for life in general?

I tend to think that I like seeing/reading about the passion of a moth for a flame but I'm not sure I'd ever want to be a moth to someone else's flame again. I've done it. I got burned big time. I prefer my life juicy rather than burn-y.

So much great literature is about how people burn twice as hot but half as long and while I tend to like witnessing that, it's mostly because at the end of the story, the fictional character is dead but I'm still alive to keep reading and more importantly to keep experiencing life. I guess I don't believe life is boring because there's so much to see and do. The world is huge and wondrous and it would take a number of lifetimes to explore it all. Burning out too quickly wouldn't let me explore it sufficiently if you see what I mean.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

"The Benefits of Ignorance" by Hal Sirowitz

If ignorance is bliss, Father said,
shouldn't you be looking blissful?
You should check to see if you have
the right kind of ignorance. If you're
not getting the benefits that most people
get from acting stupid, then you should
go back to what you always were—
being too smart for your own good.

[jmax315.livejournal.com]

A matter of opinion; I do not deny the validty of the writer's position, but I insist on the equal validity of its converse.