Larry David has a message for us.
Also, April is National Poetry Month, so here is John Milton (1608-1674) with a similar message:
When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask; but Patience to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o'er land and ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait."
Or, updated and secularized: we also advance the cause by staying in and binge watching our favorite shows, a "mild yoke" considering what is happening, and is going to happen, in ICUs across our country. TV watching is the kind of heroism I'm cut out for.
Milton isn't widely loved—Dr Johnson said of his greatest work, the epic poem Paradise Lost, "no one ever wished it longer"—but the above sonnet is of biographical interest and makes me like Milton. The situation is that he's going blind. He was ambitious and had always intended to write a long poem on a Christian topic; he thought of it as a debt that he, a supremely gifted person, owed to God. But he hasn't done it, and now, with the onset of blindness, it looks as if he never will. And the poem then makes the point that God doesn't need anything from him, or anyone. The end of the story is that Paradise Lost is out of the mind of a blind man who dictated the whole thing—more than ten thousand lines of iambic pentameter—to assorted secretaries.
Since it's National Poetry Month, here's another, this one by Maggie Smith, a contemporary American living in Ohio: "Good Bones" was a social media hit in 2016.
Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I've shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I'll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that's a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.
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