Fireside Poet John Greenleaf Whittier said: "Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been." As an ardent advocate of the abolition of slavery, I can imagine him as he penned this statement, invisioning the day that slaves will be free and the Civil War concluded. He may just have been sitting at his desk jotting down quotes with no sentimental value, for the sole purpose of us reading them in the future thinking how wise they are. Whatever he was doing or thinking about when he wrote it, it has impacted me this day in 2011. I would hate to look back at my life and think "it might have been".
For his 70th birthday, Whittier had a dinner party which included some of the most talented authors and philosophers in the world, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mark Twain, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and James Russell Lowell. Though the party may have been somewhat lame, and the conversation a bit over my head, I would love to have joined the party and asked them how to prevent "might have beens", "could have beens", "should have beens", and "would have beens"; and how to live without regret.
No comments:
Post a Comment