1 June 1958
May life bless you and give you an understanding heart.
Jean Zachmann
The above, at this point, seems the best wishes I could wish for anyone I love. It encompasses people, but also nature, natural phenomena, all the best truths of literature, music, science, art, evolution, all the culmination to the point in space where one gains some rhythmic knowledge, some rhythmic rapport with life, living and the universe, until the pieces all fit into a complete whole.
An appreciation of beauty, true beauty, sympathy for pain and struggle and turmoil, and an understanding of some kind with the broad flood of life in all its known forms, perhaps not in detail for each facet of life, because it is so wise? But rather I mean a sense of oneness with existence as human beings know it within the realm of their limited knowledges. It means the ability to sift out truth better and have some better comprehension of lasting values. It means so many, many things. It sounds very complicated, yet I believe somehow that when one really is blessed by life and truly has an understanding heart, it probably makes one bow one’s head in pity and sorrow sometimes, full of joyous wonder at other times, yet it all fits into some simple kind of a pattern.
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Elizabeth Kardos said in one of our conversations, “There is nothing quite so disheartening as being disillusioned.” “However,” she went on, “[she] seldom makes a mistake in people and though she does make a mistake about she just doesn’t bother with.”
My comment to this:
I related the conversation I had in the hospital with the gal who brought toys around, on this very subject. (This gal was talking about salesmen who play on your sympathy and sell you something you don’t want.)
The way I look at it is this . . . When I am disillusioned over someone, I feel it is an error on my part . . . An error in judgment, perhaps, because of some need of my own. If the person I have over-glamorized turns out to be other than I imagined, the best way to look at it is this. Sure, it hurts to find my judgment faulty. But, somehow, I did not estimate correctly, so why blame the person I overestimated. I’ve been a bit of a fool.
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