Happy Fathers’ Day to all you dads out there.
The question often comes up: “what is best in life?” When Conan the Cimmerian was asked this, he gave what is certainly a plausible answer:
“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”
While perfectly reasonable, this is a young man’s outlook. If someone were to ask me, however, as an older and wiser man, on a lovely morning in June, I think my own answer would be “a leisurely breakfast”.
Anyway: enjoy the day, as you see best.
4 Comments
You have two, right Malcolm? A daughter who lives abroad, from what I recall, and a son in the states. Hope they’re doing well.
Hi Jason,
Yes, I have a daughter living in Hong Kong with her husband and their three young boys, and a son in Brooklyn, and they’re all doing just fine. Thanks!
You and I have reached the age when we must take care to distinguish between leisurely and sluggish. A leisurely breakfast, yes. A sluggish breakfast, no. The problem, I find, is that my spirit is increasingly inclined to the leisurely at the same time my flesh is increasingly inclined to the sluggish; and it is sometimes difficulty to tell one from the other. But your point is correct. Rushing gave life a sense of importance when I was a young man. Rushing now puts me in a very bad temper, so I take care that I very seldom have to rush.
I’d say the essential difference between leisurely and sluggish is that appreciation is heightened when one is leisurely and depressed when one is sluggish. At a leisurely breakfast, one appreciates the contrast between the toast and the jam; at a sluggish breakfast, one feeds with all the feeling of a cow. The difference is also clear in a leisurely versus a sluggish walk. One notices all manner of things on a leisurely walk, and nothing at all on a walk that is sluggish.
JMSmith,
Yes, an important distinction. (I might as well have written “unhurried”, but I was making a reference there to John Gunther’s remark that “all happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.”)
It’s nice to be able to begin the day in peace, read the mail and the news, and collect one’s thoughts, before facing the daily affray.