Everyone Shares The Same Fate.

I Think E-mail Is Representative Of Our Fast Food Mentality In The United States, Where Everything Has Gotten Faster And Faster, And We're Required To Respond To Inputs More Quickly With Less Time For Thought And Reflection. I Believe That We Need To Slow Down.

I Picked Such Seemingly Disparate Essays, I Thought It Was Important To Say What Was The Guiding Principle In The Selection Rather Than Focus On Any One Essay. I Reached For Some Principle That Had Been Subconscious In Me And Lifted It Into Consciousness. Authenticity And Sincerity Were The Most Important Unifying Principles Of All These Apparently Different Essays.

Human Beings Consider Themselves Satisfied Only Compared To Some Other Condition. A Man Who Has Owned Nothing But A Bicycle All Of His Life Feels Suddenly Wealthy The Moment He Buys An Automobile...but This Happy Sensation Wears Off. After A While The Car Becomes Just Another Thing That He Owns. Moreover, When His Neighbor Next Door Buys Two Cars, In An Instant Our Man Feels Wretchedly Poor And Deprived.

For Me, Spirituality Includes The Belief In Things Larger Than Ourselves, An Appreciation Of Nature And Beauty, A Sensitivity To The World, A Feeling Of Shared Connection With Other Living Things, A Desire To Help People Less Fortunate Than Ourselves. All Of These Things Can Occur With Or Without God. I Do Not Believe In The Existence Of God, But I Consider Myself A Spiritual Person In The Manner I Have Just Described. I Call Myself A Spiritual Atheist. I Would Imagine That Many People Are Spiritual Atheists.

Children Grow Rapidly, Forget The Centuries-long Embrace From Their Parents, Which To Them Lasted But Seconds. Children Become Adults, Live Far From Their Parents, Live Their Own Houses, Learn Ways Of Their Own, Suffer Pain, Grow Old. Children Curse Their Parents For Their Wrinkled Skin And Hoarse Voices. Those Now Old Children Also Want To Stop Time, But At Another Time. They Want To Freeze Their Own Children At The Center Of Time.