The present is our happiness

The birds they sing
At the break of day
‘Start again,’ I heard them say
‘Don’t dwell on what has passed away
And what is yet to be …’ – Leonard Cohen, Anthem

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Hour by hour, life is kindly offered us
We have learned but little from yesterday
Of tomorrow, all knowledge is forbidden,
And if I ever feared the coming evening, –
The setting sun still saw what brought me joy.
Do like me, then: with joyful wisdom
Look the instant in the eye! Do not delay!
Hurry! Run to greet it, lively and benevolent,
Be it for action, for joy or for love!
Wherever you may be, be like a child, wholly and always;
Then you will be the All; and invincible.

Goethe, Marienbad Elegy, cited in Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, p. 231.1

The above poems are cited in Matthew Sharpe, ON AFFECTS IN ANCIENT THOUGHT, IN MEMORIUM PIERRE HADOT; PARRHESIA # 13, 2011. The book also contains this citation from Socrates in Plato’s Apology:

I do nothing but go about persuading you all, old and young alike, not to take thought for your persons and your properties, but first and chiefly to care about the greatest improvement of the soul. I tell you that virtue is not given by money, but that from virtue come money and every other good of man, public as well as private.

(Here’s a post on Socrates, the soul and the cosmos)

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The poem below is by my dear friend and comrade, Rabindra Ray, who died in 2019.

It was sent to me by his ex student, Sarover. My thanks to her

Perhaps
silence
like an interstellar drift,
perhaps gladness
or a smile,
perhaps pain, perhaps
our singularity,
though we know
each other
only
as we meet

R Ray

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This was a poem I wrote with him in mind, in 2010: My friend

Underneath it you can see three lines by him

I know no melancholy
but that of friends
gone mad and I

R Ray

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In Naxalbari, 48 years later