live.' But if you want to live life more fully, do less."
"Do less?" the woman asked with surprise. "But I'm an achiever. I
thrive on accomplishment."
"Perhaps you have already diluted your life into meaninglessness,"
suggested the philosopher.
"But I'm easily bored," said the woman.
"I am truly sorry," said the philosopher. "Did you ever seek help
for yourself?"
"What do you mean?"
"For your infirmity of being bored."
"My infirmity?" asked the woman, again surprised.
"Ah," said the philosopher, "You attribute your boredom to others or
to external circumstances."
"Well, of course," she said.
"In that case, I am sorry for your two infirmities."
"But I want to get as much out of life as I can," the woman
protested. "You philosophers all say that one's life does not
consist in material things because they disappear, but what then can
I gain that I can keep?"
"The only thing that you can really keep--and keep forever--is what
you give away," said the philosopher.
Late one afternoon a blunt young man came up to The Man Who Talked
Backwards and asked him, "Now that you are old and about to drop
dead, do you look forward to death or fear it--or perhaps I should
ask, Did you live a good life or a bad one?"
"It is not one's life that determines his view of death," replied the
philosopher, "but one's view of death that determines how he lives."
"So you are ready to end your life?" asked the blunt young man.
"Death is not an end to life, as you suppose," said the philosopher.
"This world is but a mirror that reverses everything as it reflects
it. Death therefore is merely the shattering of a mirror."
"Your mirror already has a large crack in it," said the blunt young
man, with a laugh.
"Thank you," said the philosopher.
The Clue
In every civilization, someone has to put up the signs that guide us
on our way. --Proverb
Sometimes they had to drill the post holes up on Rocky Bluff--and it
was a tough dig, what with the rocks and the hardness of the soil.
They came home plenty tired and dirty on those days. Other times
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