Ain’t that the truth?
excellent column by Clarence Page today about Robert F. Kennedy’s speech in Indianapolis on the day that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered. In his speech RFK quotes the ancient Greek dramatist Aeschylus:
He who learns must suffer, and, even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
My goodness. Isn’t that the truth? Another choice quote from Aeschylus:
It is a profitable thing, if one is wise, to seem foolish.
Hmmmm . . . I wish someone had taught me that earlier in life. As I recently told my oldest son, people tend to like the smart, the wise and the good from a distance. Once they get too close, they make people uncomfortable and inspire hostility at worst or more commonly, are just held at a safe distance where they are more enjoyable to the average person.
I always love finding ancient truth which rings true across the eons. It’s the truth of Ecclesiastes:
That which has been is that which will be, And that which has been done is that which will be done . So there is nothing new under the sun.
To round this collection of fairly random thoughts let me recommend to you, if you haven’t done it before, to read the book of Ecclesiastes. There’s nothing else like it in scriptures and it’s a treasure trove of quotes and poetry. In our house there are certain days when all we have to say is, “it’s been an Ecclesiastes kind of day” and the other knows just what we mean.