An Essay by Einstein

A sunset view of the Pacific Ocean, I took a couple summers ago from 
White Rock Beach, near my hometown, Vancouver, British Columbia.
god is the most brilliant artist!

I am an admirer of Einstein - not only for his genius and brilliance, but for his wisdom, humanity, passion, and love of life. I would like to share with you an excerpt from one of his essays.

"How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people -- first of all for those upon whose smiles and well-being our own happiness is wholly dependent, and then for the many, unknown to us, to whose destinies we are bound by the ties of sympathy. A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving...

"I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves -- this critical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. Without the sense of kinship with men of like mind, without the occupation with the objective world, the eternally unattainable in the field of art and scientific endeavors, life would have seemed empty to me. The trite objects of human efforts -- possessions, outward success, luxury -- have always seemed to me contemptible.

"My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude..."

The rest of this essay can be found in the text of this copyrighted essay, "The World As I See It," originally published in "Forum and Century, vol. 84, pp. 193-194, Living Philosophies New York: Simon Schuster, 1931.

I, often quote from Einstein, so I thought it was only appropriate that I dedicate a posting to him.