[EAS]Season's Warmest Wishes!

pjk pjk at design.eng.yale.edu
Tue Dec 24 18:24:36 EST 2002


Subject:   Season's Warmest Wishes!

Dear EAS-INFO Readers -

Warmest best wishes to all EAS-INFO subscribers!

    --Peter Kindlmann (aka --PJK)

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DESIDERATA 

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace
there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on
good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too
have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are
vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in
your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the
changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of
trickery. But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many
persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of
heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be
cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and
disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the
counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But
do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born
of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle
with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the
trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not
it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of
life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and
broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

--- Max Ehrmann, 1927

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Purportedly "found in Old St. Paul's Church, Baltimore, dated 1692."
Not surprising, given its modern elements, it was actually written
in 1927 by Indiana author, poet and attorney Max Ehrmann (1872 -
1945). The confusion appears to trace to the distribution of the
poem to parishioners by the rector of St. Paul's Church, in the
1950s, on church letterhead which gave the church's founding date.
E.g. see
<http://home.t-online.de/home/Volkert.Braren/desi_inf.htm>
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0517701839/>
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